Rose Falls, Oregon
by AnonymousInsomnia
Summary: It's been a whole year since the Pines twins faced Weirdmageddon together in the "quiet" town of Gravity Falls. This time, they're ready to spend their first years as teens in style at the Mystery Shack. It'll be just Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Stan, Ford, Candy, Grenda, Wendy, Melody, and - a new employee? Who is she, and why is she so... Weird?
1. Chapter 1: Welcome Back to Gravity Falls

**Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or Gravity Falls. Any resemblance or mention to existing properties is part of the fic, a reference, or just something that I thought would be cool to include.**

Chapter 1: Welcome Back to Gravity Falls

"And over here, we have-" the tour ground to a halt as the chubby, suited, energetic Jesus Alzamirano Ramirez, owner of the Mystery Shack, noticed a pair of technically-teenagers hop out of a parked bus, immediately start intermingling with the nearby crowd, and asking around, probably wondering where Soos himself, or perhaps the Stan Pines twins. After all, the kids probably had no idea that the two of them weren't yet due to arrive until a week after they had, since they were still probably wrapping up whatever anomaly they had discovered in the Arctic Ocean.

Whatever. Soos never asked about it, since he was sure that his old boss and his brother probably didn't want to dilvulge any sensitive intelligence, for fear of attracting unwanted attention. It wasn't like he understood half of it, anyway. After all, he was a handyman, not a scientist.

However, running the Mystery Shack had always been a dearly held dream of his; even if he never voiced such desires within earshot of the grumpy old conman known as Stanley Pines. Even though he had Melody and his new hire, that was still only three people to look after a rotting, old tourist trap that barely let them get by.

It was the best thing that ever happened to the man-child that was Soos Ramirez.

Six months had passed since Mayor Tyler had passed the "Never Mind All That" act, and the younger Pines twins were due to start the first days of their summer. Unsurprisingly, they urged their parents to let them go to the quiet town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, even if it took a little more convincing to let them stay at a cabin with a man they hadn't met before, rather than the untrustworthy family that was their Grunkle Stan.

Mabel always wore one of her trademark sweaters, and this one was no exception, if the glitter and knitted Rubik's cube embroidered on the front was any clue. She also seemed to have foregone a skirt, and now sported a pair of dark blue jeans, with a matching pair of navy high tops adorning her feet.

Dipper, on the other hand, wore a plain navy blue t-shirt under a red windbreaker: a inverse on the colors he had somehow sported the entire summer prior. He too had also worn a pair of blue jeans today, and wore a pair of identical shoes to Mabel's. His head was adorned with Wendy Corduroy's lumberjack hat, which, if Soos knew him well (which he did), had probably never left his line of sight through the entire eighth grade.

They had both grown a bit, at least half a foot each, with Mabel probably taking the lead due to her extra millimeter's head start. They both looked like proper "teens" now, and would likely avoid the Dusk 2 Dawn convenience store, no matter how friendly they were with the owners' spirits.

"Hey dudes!" Soos broke out of his "Mr. Mystery" persona for but a second to greet the ki- _teens_. Don't wanna make that mistake again.

"Soos!" Mabel and Dipper Pines exclaimed at once and simultaneously. Soos wondered if it was a twin thing when they did that.

"Sorry about having to leave you hangin', dudes," Soos replied, "I gotta take care of a few more tours for the day before I can show you your rooms. But while you wait, I know someone who will handle things 'till I get back."

"Melody?" Mabel was curious as to how the two were running things with only Wendy to man the booth, since they were down four workers, as Mabel and Dipper were at school, and the Stans were somewhere off in the Arctic Ocean punching giant squids in the face. Soos shook his head.

"Nah, bro. Got a new hire. Should be fixing up that broken ice cream machine she's been workin' o-"

"-ICE CREAM?!" exploded Mabel, not even giving Soos anymore luxuries such as finishing sentences. "Sorry Soos, Mabel's gotten an addiction to ice cream over the school year." Dipper quickly explained, simultaneously trying to calm Mabel down... to no avail.

"Sorry to disappoint you Mabel" Soos began with difficulty, not wanting to enrage the obviously vicious icecream craving savage. "The ice cream machine was broken when I got it, my new employee has been trying to fix it."

"I'LL FIX IT! I WILL GIVE FREEDOM TO ALL CREAM FLAVORED ICE! WHERE IS IT?!" shouted Mabel, posing in a theatrical demeanor attracting the strange looks of some of the Mystery Shack's tourists.

"Hey, aren't you forgetting something?" Mabel blinked before widening her eyes in realization, letting go of her dramatic stance.

"That's right! Waddles!" Mabel's favorite (okay, only. But that didn't mean that he wasn't the best pig in the world) pet pig hopped out of the bus, completely oblivious to the seething glare that the driver threw his way, and _waddled_ over to the siblings.

"So who's this 'one-who-works-on-icecream-machine'?" Quizzed Dipper, offering a grin as the hog reached them.

"Look for a 'Shack cap, a shirt with a rose on it, and red headphones. You might have to get her attention first, though. She loves her rad jams." Soos air guitared for a second to emphasize his point with "rad jams".

Dipper and Mabel shared a look before shrugging. Feeling he needed to avoid an awkward silence, Dipper flipped his sister's long locks out from behind her over onto her face.

"Last one to the 'Shack has to give Grunkle Stan a foot massage when we next see him!" Dipper took off like a speeding bullet towards the old wooden home, leaving Mabel in the dust.

"Hey, no *ptoo* fair!" Mabel spat a few times before flipping her hair back into its rightful place and dashing after her brother, determined to regain the distance she had lost, falling ito his trap.

"..." Soos was voiceless for a moment. It warmed his heart that the two hadn't changed a bit in the way they interacted with each other. Shaking his silly emotions off for the time being, he returned his attention back to the tour group he had stalled with his new summer charges and immediately shifted back to Mr. Mystery.

"And here we have a rock. But it looks like a face. But is it a rock, or is it a face? It's the rock-that-looks-like-a-face rock. Any questions?"

"Does it look like a rock?"

"No, it looks like a face."

"Is it a face?"

"It's a rock that _looks_ like a face!"

* * *

The wooden door slammed open with a _bang_ as Dipper looked inside. It was a mess, with haphazardly placed furniture and gift shop _things_ being put in so many random places that it was surely against some local governmental regulations. It looked just like summer home sweet home, but the leaky pipe in the roof that neither Stans had ever bothered to bother Soos about fixing was completely dry, and the place lacked any mold, mildew, or cobwebs _anywhere_ , which was a first for the old tourist trap. Dipper figured that he could ask Soos about it later.

"Hey, Mabel," Dipper said, turning on his heel before crossing the threshold, "Looks like you're gonna give Stan that massa-" He was abruptly cut off by Mabel, who crashed into him, and the two teens simultaneously fell to the floor with a crash.

"Nope, don't count on _that_ , Dippington!" Mabel jumped off of her brother before things could get awkward. "Now neither of us has to give our Grunkle a massage. Imagine the horror if we had to!" Both twins cringed inwardly as they both experienced a flashback to more traumatic times.

* * *

 _The previous summer..._

"Kids!" Grunkle Stan sounded like he was having a bad time. Mabel and Dipper looked up from their current activities, worried as to what their Grunkle could possibly be so anxious-sounding about. "I have a serious problem here, and Soos ain't here to fix it for me!"

The twins shared a look. What could Soos possibly offer? The 'Shack was closed, and there wasn't anything catastrophically combusting or exploding, so what did Stan want?

"I need you to scratch myself in two places at once!" Mabel and Dipper simultaneously froze up. The only thought that ran through their heads was a resounding _nooooooo..._

* * *

"I'll never be able to look at a backscratcher the same way ever again."

"You and me both."

They finally got a good look around the gift shop. Other than one or two shoppers, no one paid the dynamic duo any mind. Melody was manning the counter, and she gave them a wink as she helped the current customer, Mayor Tyler, decide between a Puma shirt and a Panther shirt. It seemed that some things didn't change at all in the time they left the 'Falls. Soos' girlfriend gestured with her thumb to a third employee, whose legs could be seen poking out from under the ice cream machine.

Mabel, with a reinvigorated need for freezing sugary ice, bolted towards the machine for any bit of ice cream it could offer rather than the newcomer underneath it. Dipper nodded a thanks to Melody, who had already gotten reengrossed into a heated debate with Tyler over the ethics of Pumas versus Panthers. Dipper made his way over to the vending machine, noting how the employee was hard at work, surrounded by power tools, and had a...

"A blow torch?" Dipper was surprised, as even though he knew what a blow torch was, and that it was obviously being used, as the crackling and smell of something burning in the air was evidence enough, he was dubious as to its validity so close to something so wooden as the rickety old floors. He gave a pointed look back to Melody, who shrugged helplessly.

Mabel, who needed a cold treat in a bowl now, tapped the right leg on its thigh a few times to get its owner's attention. She soon slid out from underneath the machine, being ferried out by a small scooter platform.

True to Soos' word, the petite girl wore a black t-shirt with a stylized red blooming rose emblem and a 'Shack cap, along with a pair of faded brown cargo work pants, stained black in spots with what was presumably oil, and steel-toed work boots. She wore a pair of expensive-looking headphones on her head, which were adorned with the same red rose emblem as her shirt.

In her hand was a blue propane blow torch, which she quickly shut off, probably for fear of burning the old house down, and removed her headphones, which could be heard faintly blaring some sort of electric guitar chord progression, or something. Neither twin was exactly proficient in music beyond karaoke.

She was older than both of them, that much Dipper could tell. A little older than Wendy had been the previous year, definitely. She had a pale complexion, black hair highlighted red at the tips, and gray eyes. No, they weren't grey, they possessed a lighter sheen than that. Silver, probably, then. It was unusual, but probably not unheard of somewhere in the world.

"Hey, What's up?" her voice was high-pitched, and gave off an air of innocence when she spoke.

"Heyo! I'm Ice Cream Pines, and I need Mabel!" Mabel was overly energetic, a little more than usual, since the aspect of icecream was in question. Seeing that he needed to once again save someone from Mabel's all consuming dependancy, Dipper spoke up "Sorry, she's Mabel, and I'm Dipper."

"Oh! Soos has told me all about you guys!" the girl jumped up from her position on the floor, dropping the blow torch on the ground with a dull thud. "I'm Ruby. Ruby Rose. I assume you've gotta be tired from your trip, right? I'll get your luggage." Ruby tore out of the room, faster than the twins could see, and returned momentarily, leading Waddles inside, carrying...

Both their bags in one hand, and their backpacks in the other?! That stuff weighed a ton, and each twin had needed help carrying those bags onto the bus in the first place, and here was a teenage girl carrying all of them like it was nothing?! The Pines were speechless and frozen in their spots, but before they could incredulously ask how the girl was carrying the items so effortlessly, she spoke once more.

"You'll be staying in the rooms you were in last summer, so I think you know the way there," she marched up the stairs without so much as being slowed by the extra baggage, with Waddles the pig in tow.

The twins shared another look before they followed, Mabel leaving the icecream machine behind, forgotten. Dipper looked around to see if anyone else saw her unsettling speed, and sure enough, a few awestruck customers noticed Ruby's ascent. Also a not-so-awestruck Melody, who by now was used to Ruby's antics.

The attic door shuddered open with a ear-splitting creak, as it had gone without use for quite some time. Ruby sauntered in, and dumped the bags in the middle of the room. Mabel immediately ran inside and started hopping up and down on her mattress, while Dipper walked in, trying to keep his cool and not let it show on his face how much he missed the cramped old space.

He was entirely unsuccessful.

"You guys are going to have another great summer, I just know it!" Ruby cheerfully reassured Dipper, having misinterpreted his excitement for anxiety. Dipper nodded meekly in response. "Come on, it's probably not changed much in the town, but-"

Ruby froze up and turned to face out the window. It was getting a bit dark out; Dipper wasn't quite sure as to what her purpose was when she looked outside.

"I gotta go guys," Ruby said, her voice taking on urgency and purpose. "I use that old break room as my room, so if you need anything, just leave a note there." She walked out of the attic, pulled out a strange-looking smartphone from her pants' side pocket, quickly dialed a number, and put it up the her ear. The twins could hear her saying something to Soos - something about going on break for a "G" situation - on the way out.

"Wonder what that was all about," Mabel said eventually, shattering the silence.

"Dunno *yawn* but we better get our stuff put away and ready for the rest of the day. I'm beat." Dipper was incomprehensibly exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to curl up underneath the blankets of his bed once he finally got covers on it. He would think about the mysterious new employee later. The twins set to work, and soon got their stuff into their rightful places, finally getting some sleep.

* * *

 _Dipper's Journal_

 _June 22, 2012,_

 _Mabel and I finally got back to the 'Falls, and we met Soos and Melody. They seemed to be just as happy as ever, and looked like they were doing well in the old 'Shack._

 _It looks like they hired someone new - a girl. She seems like a nice enough person, about Wendy's age, but it feels like she's keeping something hidden. We've only talked for a little bit, but even so, it feels like we know less about her than we really should. She's really fast, and really strong._

 _Looks like Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are going to be coming back next week, and they've probably taken care of whatever they needed to do in the Arctic Ocean. I hope that they'll have brought some kind of souvenir for us._

 _We still need to figure out what's changed around here, and I'm sure that Ford will help us figure out what we need to know about everyone, including Ruby Rose - the new employee of the 'Shack._

Dipper finished his journal entry, and was about to click off his reading light when a resounding boom rang out from outside.

 _That sounded like a gunshot_ , thought Dipper. He decided to catch some sleep, albeit deeper under the sheets than before. He stole a quick glance at Mabel, who was deeply dreaming, unaffected by the gunshot, with Waddles at the foot of her bed, similarly unfazed.

As he was finally nodding off, he heard the 'Shack door faintly creak open and close with a soft pop, startling him awake immediately, as if he had taken a cup of Death Wish brew coffee. Careful as to not rouse his sibling, Dipper reached under his bed and withdrew a wooden bat: a precaution he had started to take ever since the apocalypse known as Weirdmageddon had arrived last year. He opened the attic door and slowly crept his way down the stairs in order to check out who had gained entry into the summer home.

* * *

 **AN: Hello, this is kind of my first attempt at this sort of thing, so please rate and review, yadda, yadda, yadda, and all that good stuff.**

 **This is my first entry on this site, and my first fanfiction overall. I had my beta reader/editor help me out with a few things, and he was a great help with this stuff.**

 **Also, the ice cream addiction thing was his idea. If you loved it, great! If you hated it, let him know in the reviews.**

 **Until next time.**

 **Edit: Also, if you're wondering when a new chapter is up and running, you'll have to wait for my beta reader/editor to get the next chapter up and running. He makes the changes that you will sometimes see in the story itself.**

 **The process goes like this: I send him a few chapters and he will review and edit them accordingly. He sends it back to me and I do one last check before posting it. It's rough, but I hope it'll get the job done. If you notice any spelling or grammar errors, that's likely him, since I am extremely OCD about my own grammar, spelling, and punctuation.**

 **I know, waiting is killing me as well, too.**


	2. Chapter 2: A New Mystery

**Chapter 2: A New Mystery**

* * *

Dipper Pines crept down the attic stairs, hoping with all of his being that whoever had gained entry into the building wasn't armed with some outrageous weapon or was just a dangerous person in general. He really didn't want to be violently assaulted or murdered on the first day of summer back to Gravity Falls. Boy, that would look positively _scandalous_ in the newspapers. Probably would give Toby Determined (even if no one was going to call him Bodacious T) something to actually write about, and might start a witch hunt of sorts, if he knew Gravity Falls right (which he did).

The stairs creaked ever so slightly as he made his way in the general vicinity of the gift shop. The lighting was dim due to the fact that the only light he could rely on was the moonlight streaming through the windows. He could also smell the vague scent of something... smoky. All in all, it was as if a bad anime or something had come to life to become the entire setting of Dipper's worldly existence.

Heart thumping against his chest madly, he finally managed to get to the gift shop section of the house; thankfully, it was empty as a box of chocolates after Valentine's Day. Dipper, silent as a mouse with ADHD, stepped onto the front porch. It was just as creaky as ever, even with his relatively light clothing and heavy wool socks (even as unorthodox as it was to wear thick socks in the summer).

Dipper peered into the woods with what limited night vision he possessed, which wasn't much. What he _could_ see was nothing out of the ordinary: a couple of triangle-tipped forms trying to find some scrap of edibility in their trash cans. _Gnomes_.

 _They could have seen who had come into the 'Shack tonight!_ Dipper was sure of it. _I'd better sneak over there, maybe grab one of them in order to find out-_

Dipper was flung from his thoughts by a loud crash and a high-pitched yelp coming from inside the 'Shack. He knew what his twin's cry of alarm sounded like from nearly the day they were born, since the two spent their entire lives together, and this cry was not it.

That left only three people who could make such a high-pitched cry: Ruby, Melody, and, as much as he hated to admit it, himself.

Dipper rushed inside, heading to the source of the noise. In his intense Bill-fearing paranoia the previous summer, he had mapped the entirety of the 'Shack in his mind, preparing for the day when Bill might try to possess any one of them again. Though it had not ever happened, Dipper was, in a faraway corner of his mind, ecstatic that such a skill could finally prove itself useful. He rounded the corner to find that the sound had emanated from...

 _The break room?_ Dipper's mind raced at the implications. _That would mean Ruby's in trouble! But what if that was the voice of the intruder? But Ruby's pretty strong; she could handle herself. But what if she didn't? That means that someone who's much stronger than her is lying in wait right_ there _for me to come by!_

Dipper had no time to think further as suddenly a silhouette started to shamble out of the old break room. Acting quickly, he swung his bat in a wide arc around, hoping to catch the possible assailant with a preemptive strike.

Dipper couldn't quite comprehend what happened next, but he knew that the silhouette grabbed his bat mid-swing, and before he even knew it, he was lying on the floor, dazed and on his back.

He could finally see his attacker one last time before saying goodbye to this worldly plane, then. Unafraid, yet oh so scared all at once, he raised his gaze upwards to meet the soft glow of a pair of... silver eyes.

* * *

Ruby's eyes blinked in recognition, even if Dipper wasn't quite sure how she could see in such a pitch black environment as the 'Shack at such a late hour.

"Oh my God, I am so so so so so so sorry!" Ruby sounded flustered and... well... regretful, for lack of a better term. "I just walked out of my room and saw you but I had no idea it was you and just saw you swinging a bat at me and I couldn't just stand there so I blocked and threw you just as I was trained to do and I almost killed you and I'm so so so sorry!"

Damn, Ruby was kind of a flibbertigibbet when she was worked up.

"Oh, it's fine," Dipper replied, cutting her off and stifling a groan as he rubbed his aching head, which had hit the floor on his way down. "Mabel got into some sort of martial arts craze this last school year, and you would never guess who had to be her 'practice dummy'. It's fine, I've had a lot worse." That was a bit of a white lie. Although Mabel had turned out to be quite the fighter, she never really _threw_ Dipper whenever they 'sparred'. Dipper would never admit it, but that throw really smarted, and he would probably have a bruised back or something in the morning. It at least seemed to have calmed the jittery teen somewhat, and she visibly relaxed, happy that she hadn't caused any permanent damage to the boy.

"Oh good," Ruby sighed in relief, "It would make a terrible first impression on your boss' old boss if you beat up their great-nephew on the first day you met, you know?"

"Yeah, I bet that would be pretty bad," Dipper concurred. "Hey, wait, did you just get back from somewhere? I heard the door open and I thought..." Dipper let his voice trail off, instead letting the implications finish the sentence for him.

"Oh yeah, that was me," Ruby affirmed, "I just... uh... had to grab some milk, you know? We're... um... out, I think." Ruby chuckled a bit, hoping that Dipper would buy it.

"Yeah, sure you did."

He didn't. Pained snark, thy name is Dipper Pines.

"Anyway," Ruby continued, hoping to break the tension in the room, "You sure you're fine? I could get like an ice pack or something."

"That'd be nice, thanks," Dipper actually _really_ wanted an ice pack right now, but what kind of guy would he be if he didn't try to save face?

Somehow, Ruby picked up on that. In the dark. She chuckled before dashing off to the kitchen.

Dipper could hear the soft _pop_ of the freezer opening and the slightly louder _slap_ of it closing before Ruby dashed back in, ice pack in hand.

Before she could hand it to him, however, she paused.

"Wait a second, I forgot to close the door, didn't I?"

Another dash, and another soft _slap_ later, she returned, handing Dipper the ice pack, which soothed the soft, burning ache of the already-bruising flesh on his back. Ruby led the boy over to the living room, set him on the recliner, and clicked on a nearby lamp, drowning the room in light.

Once his vision finally returned, he gave the once-over to his assailant-turned-savior. Ruby wore a simple pajama outfit: a black, long-sleeved shirt with reddish-pink polka dots and white lining, with a complementing pair of pajama bottoms. Adorning her head was the same Mystery Shack question mark cap that she had worn earlier that day. Was she planning on sleeping in it? Weird. She also bore a thermos in her hand, which was probably filled with some tea, or something. She brought over a chair from the kitchen and sat across from Dipper, standing in front of the tv.

The two sat in silence, with Dipper nursing his bruise as casually as possible and Ruby watching him, with the occasional sip from the thermos.

"You wanna tell me what you were _actually_ doing out there?" Ruby paused, appearing to think about something - probably what lie she was going to concoct in order to avoid the boy's prying nature.

"Would you believe me if I said that I was fighting monsters of darkness and unimaginable destruction every other week?" Dipper made a _kinda-sorta_ sort of motion with his hand. "Well that's not it. I go out and volunteer to do a thing here and there around town, and sometimes I get so caught up in the work that I forget to come back at the right time. Surely you've done the same, sometime?"

Dipper shrugged in response. Her words seemed a little more genuine this time, but he could tell that the girl was hiding something. Something big. You didn't get to live in the same home as Stanley Pines and Stanford Pines for an entire summer with the former and the last few weeks of said summer with the latter without picking up something here and there.

"What were you doing, roaming the 'Shack this late at night?" Dipper paused, appearing to think about something.

"Ummm, what if I told you that I'm secretly a government agent, and that I'm collecting intel on you for the CIA?" Dipper replied, "I've got _super-secret_ stealth training, you know." Dipper accented his words with a flourish and a ninja hand-pose.

Except his hand bumped into the lamp sitting beside him, and it teetered before he made a wild grab to stabilize it.

"Heh, heh," Dipper nervously chuckled. Ruby giggled in response and gave him a _kinda-sorta_ gesture in return.

"You know, you kind of remind me of someone I know," Ruby continued, a wistful look in her eye, "This guy, he's kind of like you. Always looking out for others, bending over backwards for his sisters, trying to make the world a better place in any way he could. Even if he didn't really have the strength to."

"Sounds like he's a great guy." Dipper wondered where she was going with this.

"He is. Always the charmer, though. My sister used to call him 'lady-killer', since almost every girl he met turned him down from so much as going to a movie." Wow. Ruby had Dipper pegged way more accurately than either of them thought. "Though there was one girl that he eventually managed to win over."

"How did he do that?"

"This girl was always raised upon a pedestal her whole life. She was intelligent, strong, and very, very talented. She once took on four of our school's biggest bullies in a four versus one fight that ended in her favor by a landslide! A prodigy, everyone called her.

But when you're put on a pedestal like that, you tended to become distanced from those who put you there in the first place. Everyone she met had treated her with a kind of reverence and respect that really doesn't belong in the environment of a girl just trying to earn her way through society. Then here comes this bumbling fool who sees her as just another student, albeit a lot more talented than he. This is someone who saw her as _who_ she was, not _what_ she was.

And you know what? The guy doesn't even figure it out until the last minute that she _liked_ him. All this time spent chasing girls when one who saw through his awkwardness for the genuinely good guy he was was right there in front of him! I swear, some days you could cut the tension with a butter knife."

"Did they ever get together? You know, in the end?"

Ruby froze for a moment. She shook her head sadly.

"No, but they did go to prom in a sort of 'together' way. She never got any invites from any of the guys at school, and he told her he'd wear a dress if she never got a date."

"He didn't..." Ruby nodded.

"He did. They even had a synchronized dance routine, the two of them and two of their other friends. One day, however, the time came for a fighting tournament. Nothing too much; just a few friendly spars between teams. But as luck would have it, something... _bad_... happened in the tournament. Someone..." Ruby had a tear in her eye at this point. "Someone... no. That's a story for another day. You'd better go to bed, kiddo."

"Sorry if I've caused you to bring up some bad memories.

"Sorry," Ruby finally broke the permeating void of silence between the two, "I needed that. Thanks for listening to what I had to say."

"N-No problem, Rubes," Dipper stammered out. He didn't know if that was the right thing to say, however, as hurt flashed in Ruby's eyes for a second, but it was gone soon enough that he convinced himself that it was his imagination.

"You'd better get to bed, Dipstick. Tomorrow's a brand new day, you know?" Ruby stood and started dragging back the chair to the kitchen.

"K," Dipper said, "See you tomorrow."

* * *

"I'm telling you," Dipper was beginning to get annoyed. "There's something _weird_ about her, Mabel!" Dipper took a small sip of his can of Pitt Cola, savoring the tart and fizzy flavor of the admittedly somewhat tasteless soft drink.

"You're just imagining things, bro-bro." While her twin brother was getting more and more irritated, the younger girl was merely getting all the more amused at her brother's paranoia. "I mean, what proof do you even have of her 'weirdness'? All you did was run into her in the middle of the night and try to wring a bat at her. You're not exactly the best fighter around, and she probably just got really lucky."

"But you _do_ know how dark it was in there, right?" Dipper was indignant to a small degree at this point. It was almost enough to ruin their very carefully planned bi-monthly rooftop picnic that they had for no expositional reason whatsoever. They sat on a pink and white checkered cloth spread flat over the platform opposite the "Mystery Hack" sign, with a small wicker basket filled with food acting as a barrier between the two.

"What? Her eyes were probably used to the dark, given that she was outside for so long," Mabel couldn't help but grin at Dipper's increasing frustration with having no proof whatsoever. "I mean, really, dude. You're splitting hairs at this point. Hard."

"You know what?" Dipper shot to his feet, his face beet red. "I'm going to _prove_ to you that she's not normal! I'll come back at the next picnic with some evidence in tow, and _then_ we'll see who's splitting hairs!" Dipper stormed off, feeling unusually angsty at this time of day.

Mabel merely shook her head in sad amusement. It was about time the hormonal mood swings of teenhood had come to her brother, and it appeared as if they had hit hard.

But then again, Mabel was getting distracted. There was something she still had to do.

The girl reached down into the deepest depths of the wicker basket and withdrew a rather large chocolate chip cookie, giving the treat a wistful grin before listening intently to make sure that Dipper was out of earshot.

"'Kay, Ruby, you can come out now. He's long gone."

The teen slipped out from behind the 'Shack's sole chimney and leaned back upon its brick surface, whistling a faint, aimless tune. The two girls gave each other silent smiles before Mabel tossed the large cookie at Ruby, who deftly leaned forward and caught it with one hand.

The two had developed a small camaraderie together over the short week that they had spent together, and very quickly had developed a sense of each others' preferences. Mabel caught onto Ruby's mechanical genius and intense love of strawberries and sweets, while Ruby made sure to remember Mabel's fondness for glitter for when she would have to buy the younger girl a gift. They made sure to keep this friendship under wraps when around Dipper, though, since Mabel knew that Dipper would just pester her about anything weird that Ruby had about her. For now, she would let the older girl reveal everything about her in time, as had most of the mysteries in the 'Falls been revealed.

"So," Ruby began, nibbling on the unnecessarily large pastry, "I thought that Dipper might have had an obsession with the strange things about the town. However, it seems that that's been an understatement."

"Mm-hm!" Mabel had already grabbed another small sandwich from the basket, and had taken a bite out of it. She swallowed before continuing, "Has been ever since he found our Grunkle Ford's third journal in the woods one day."

"That old thing? I'd already read through that, and while it seems that it's a reliable guide, the book looks like it was written by none other than the maddest of madmen. Like if the minds of, say, Van Gogh and Poe had a brainchild of pure insanity."

"Wait, wasn't it destroyed during _those_ events?"

"Nah, Stan made a copy, I think. Soos showed it to me once."

"Oh."

"Anyway, I think that I'll do that thing that I was supposed to be up here doing."

Ruby reached out to behind the chimney, grabbing a red toolbox and a bag of nails.

"Fixing that damn sign!" she proudly proclaimed, confident that she would get it this time. "I have yet another foolproof plan to finally accomplish this impossible task! The sign is the immovable object, but I shall be the unstoppable force!"

"Really?" Mabel's eyes were as wide as saucers. "You can fix it? But it's been impossible for anyone here. Not even Soos could fix it during his time as a handyman. How many times have you tried to fix it so far?"

"One hundred and twenty-seven times," Ruby solemnly replied, having deflated a bit from the reality check. "But this time, I have a plan!"

"What kind of plan?"

"If it works, I want it to be a surprise," Ruby said, a gleam in her eye, "But I can tell you it involves a half-kilo of hot glue and a blowtorch."

"Also, your uncles are coming around in a couple of days, right? I'd like to meet them. I've heard quite a lot about what they did for this town. I'd like to say hi to some of the most important saviors of this town."

"OK!" Mabel was, of course, excited to meet someone who was interested in meeting her family. Maybe they could finally coax some answers to some questions they still held towards their Grunkle Ford with proper reinforcements.

"Now you better go do something else, besides being on top of the roof with me. You'll be safer if you're not around when the sparks start flying."

"OK!"

* * *

Dipper began his quest for answers the next day. His first stop: Ruby Rose's shed.

The shed was originally just an unused part of the Mystery Shack tourist trap, but Dipper had gleaned from Soos that Ruby had commandeered it for her own purposes shortly after she had come into the employ of the 'Shack. No one really knew what she did in there; the only thing that they knew was that she would sometimes enter the building and stay there for varying lengths of time. Eventually, she would reemerge with some sort of complicated device or jury-rigged invention.

No one really knew what she did in the shed, but Dipper was absolutely determined to find out.

He'd noticed a little patterns during these occurances during his breaks. Normally, Ruby kept the place literally under lock-and-key, but when she went on one of her little "ventures", she tended to forget to lock the door on the way out. So when one day, she emerged from the shed after an excrutiatingly long time, Dipper was more than ready.

Okay, he had to do a few stretches first. Lying down in the underbrush, concealed to nearly any living being, for the better part of three hours, was not exactly comfortable.

Lady Luck appeared to have been smiling upon the young boy, as when he approached the shed for what was _definitely_ his first attempt, the lock was left undone and hanging loosely from its perch, neglecting its sole purpose in its existence.

Dipper quietly slipped inside, gripping a flashlight in his off hand. He had prepared well, as the workshop was almost too dark to see into without an artificial light.

Almost. Though Dipper could see a curious amount of littered and probably dangerous refuse and junk without the light of his handheld lamp, what really caught his eye was the sole object illuminated without his torch.

Cast in the orange light of a flourescent bulb was a solitary, strange, irregularly shaped object, hanging on a pair of hooks on the wall. It appeared to be contructed out of some sort of steel or alloy that was painted a blood red with black metallic joints. Cautiously, dipper made his way to the unknown machine.

As Dipper tried to lift the object off of its hooks, there was one thing he absolutely took notice of right off the bat. It was _heavy_. It felt like it weighed as much as five heavy school textbooks piled on top of each other to him. As Dipper struggled with the hefty object, he noticed a small protrusion emerging from about halfway down the top of the machine. Suspecting it to be a switch of sorts, he shifted around its weight in his arms and placed a finger on it, preparing to depress it as soon as he felt it give somewhat.

"Dipper! No! Put that down right now!"


	3. Chapter 3: Attack of the S Eyed Girls

**Chapter 3: Attack of the Silver Eyed Girls**

* * *

Dipper slowly turned around to face the cry of alarm. Very slowly. He knew that there was only one person in the 'Falls who possessed that voice.

When he turned around, he saw a haggard and panting Ruby Rose. Her posture was hunched over, and her body language exuded panic. How did she even know that Dipper was in her shed?

"I, um, have a wireless system that lets me know when someone messes with my stuff," Ruby said, as if reading his mind. "If that's what you were wondering. You know, if you were wanting to know how I knew you were touching Cres- um, that thing in your hands."

"Oh, ok." Dipper wasn't convinced, but he wasn't about to let Ruby know what he was thinking. At least, not until he could be sure that he knew exactly what was up with the girl.

"So... You should probably get goin' because... umm..." Ruby wanted Dipper out of her shed. Why? What was so important about this place that he wasn't allowed in? Fortunately for her, and _un_ fortunately for him, the former was saved by the proverbial bell.

"DIPPER!" called a voice from inside the Mystery Shack, it's volume undoubtedly deafening to anyone still inside the house, if the fact that Dipper and Ruby were able to hear it was any indication. "DIP-STICK! CANDY AND GRENDA ARE FINALLY OUT OF SCHOOL! GET YOUR BUTT IN HERE SO WE CAN HAVE A MAKEOVER!"

 _Oh no._

Ruby snapped her gaze to Dipper's, and it wasn't hard to figure out that she had an epiphany. Her wide grin and the relief in her eyes was evidence enough. Heck, if all of this had been an old cartoon, then a lightbulb would have flickered to life over her head.

"Well, it looks like your time has been occupied for now. Just go out the door andyoucanaskmeaboutthisstuffmaybelatermaybenevereveragain'kaythanksbyeDipper!" Ruby quickly shoved the young teen out the door, her words compressing into a rant that blew by at the speed of sound. Before his brain could really keep up, he found himself out the shed's door, with said door slamming behind her with a dull thud, followed by the crash of some type of metal thing clattering to the floor. "Aww, dangit!" Dipper heard Ruby's voice cry out from inside the shed.

Dipper immediately turned 180 degrees on his heel and pounded his fists on the shed door. "Hey! Ruby! You can't just ignore me! I still have so many questions! RUBY ROSE!" Dipper was furious, though not really at Ruby, per say, but more for himself. Some answers to the girl's identity were within his grasp, and because of his hesitation, they escaped him. Naturally, someone who wanted their life secret would try to preserve their anonymity; in Dipper's mind, if someone was snooping around and was caught, it would be because they lacked some skill or had some flaw that prevented them from finding anything out.

"Dippington! There you are!" Dipper froze up like a statue on the spot.

 _Oh no._

Maybe if he stayed _really, really_ still, she wouldn't notice him.

A hand grabbed Dipper's shoulder and slowly dragged him back to the 'Shack.

 _Or maybe not._

"Dude, I've been looking everywhere for you today! Candy and Grenda just got back from school and we're having another sleepover to start off the summer!" Dipper just went as limp as possible. He didn't have the strength to fight off his own twin sister. One day, he would discover Ruby Rose's past, but for now, he was a victim to his _very_ slightly older sister's whims.

* * *

It was during one of Mabel's trashy Rom-Com flicks that Dipper finally managed to slip away from the madness that was his sister's sleepover. The film had finally gotten to a particularly emotional scene, and the bleeding hearts that were Mabel Pines, Candy Chiu, and Grenda [Error: 404 - Last Name Not Found] easily broke down into tears, allowing their makeup-clad captive to escape with relative ease.

" _All I want is to stay with you, Angelicalical_ _é, but... My father is your mother's mortal enemy. We cannot be together. It just can't be._ "

" _Say it isn't so, Bradenfordley! We can get our parents to make up, can't we?_ "

" _I'm afraid not, my dear. You'll have to find a new beloved. Farewell, my darling."_

 _"Braaaaaaaaaaaad!"_

It was trash. Oh Lord, it was horrible, but nonetheless Dipper was grateful that it managed to distract the girls long enough to slip out of Grenda's headlock and slip out of the attic for a while. At least Dipper had managed to snatch up Wendy's lumberjack cap before making his daring escape into the hall outside the attic.

"Dude, you look like you got run over by, like, a cosmetics truck, or something. Let me guess, Girls' Night?"

That voice! Dipper knew that voice!

"Wendy! Yeah, Girls' Night..." Dipper replied.

"Well, it's good to see you, anyway. Hey, come on, let's go get something to wash off all of... this," she gestured to Dipper's face, making a huge circle.

"Y-Yeah, okay!"

* * *

Wendy Corduroy was alwaysthe "cool girl", no matter where she went. You could stick her in the middle of a bustling arcade, a bowling alley, or even just on the street, and in no time, she could start some sort of party, especially if Thompson was around. However, she knew whenever her presence was needed to calm a crazy evening like this one.

She and Dipper Pines sat at the short, cheap, plywood affair that was meant to pass off as a dining table, in the cheap, mass-market gray aluminum chairs that sufficed for the Pines family's "fine" dining. Honestly, sometimes Dipper wondered just how much of the stuff in the Mystery Shack was stuff Stan had bought for cheap, and how much Stan had pilfered from cheap stores.

Wendy was very much mostly the same since Dipper's last year at the sleepy town of Gravity Falls. Her attire was still mostly the same as before, but with two differing details: her choice of dark blue jeans, beaten-up rain boots, and bluish earrings remained the same, yet she wore a red flannel shirt and Dipper's old Mystery Shack Pine Tree hat from the previous summer. Physically, Wendy appeared to be at least a few more inches taller, and she wore her long red hair in a ponytail, presumably just so that it wouldn't get in the way of things.

She'd made the two some tea, then iced it. Dipper and Wendy now sat with half-empty glasses, and had passed the time with some small talk. Funny how after all this time, the thing that Dipper had so much trouble doing around her became so easy after the apocalypse.

"So yeah, finals were _brutal_. Didn't get out until yesterday, and even so, testing was crazy." Wendy took a sip. "I'm not sure if Thompson was even able to get that last bit of extra credit in before the deadline. Man, it would suck if he was stuck in summer school." Another sip. "So how's your summer been going?"

Dipper had been taking a long gulp of his tea, and spluttered at the sudden question. "Guh! Kha! Ack!" Finally getting his breathing under control, he took a controlled sip of his beverage and said, "Uh, good! Yeah, it's all going great! Well, not all of it, but that's depending on who you ask, you know?"

"Oh really? What's gotten under your skin, dude?"

Dipper sighed, "It's about the 'Shack's new employee. Her name's Ruby Rose."

Wendy's eyes flashed in recognition. "Hey, I know her! Yeah, she's the new kid around. She's actually in my grade in the town's high school. Says she's some transfer student from a place called Beacon Academy."

 _Ooo_ , Dipper thought, _Finally, a name to attach to the... other name. Dang, I really need to come up with better metaphors. Is it metaphors? Maybe wordplay..._

Dipper quickly shook himself out of his reverie, asking, "Do you happen to know...?"

Wendy raised a brow, then took another relaxed sip. "Know what?"

"Anything and everything there is to know about Beacon Academy, like, you know, where it is, anything special about it, that sort of stuff."

Wendy held up her hands. "Whoa, whoa there, man. What's gone and got you so interested in Ruby?"

Dipper had to visibly calm himself down, drawing in a few deep breaths before continuing, "She's weird. I mean, it's like she has superpowers or something. She can move _really_ fast, is actually really strong, despite her size, she does... something late at night that I can't begin to guess about, and she's got, like, a mad scientist lab in that unused shed behind the 'Shack."

"...Okay, that does seem a bit strange," Wendy replied after a pregnant pause, "But she's just quiet, innocent, you know, the antisocial girl who sits by herself at lunch. She's not the next Ford, dude."

"But... But..."

"Well, I can tell you that I don't know of any Beacon Academy 'round these parts, but I'm not the authority on obscure, hard-to-find schools. I can also bet my left kidney that nobody in this town really cares about that. They're kinda just happy that someone like Ruby's around to help out."

"What?" Dipper was perplexed. Everyone liked her that much? For what?

"Yeah, she goes around, fixing stuff that people break, like their cars, appliances, and the like for free."

"WHAT?!"

"I thought it was weird, too, but I asked her about it and apparently it's her, like, hobby or something. She does it for fun."

"Huh. She's kind of a goody-two-shoes, then, huh?"

"Yeah dude. Though she does go out late at night for some reason. 'S kind of like she disappears off the face of the earth for a few hours. No one's seen her during that time in the 'Wee Hours." Now it was time for Dipper to have an epiphany. Suddenly, he had an idea...

"Hey, where're you going, dude?" Dipper had, before he'd fully realized it, already started to storm up the stairs to the attic; his body already knew what he was going to do before he even did.

"Don't worry about me. I'm just gonna make a small plan."

* * *

It was a hazy dusk in the forests surrounding Gravity Falls, Oregon. The entirety of the small town was collectively slumbering, resting easy knowing that the worst, for them, had long since come to pass, and that they could peacefully exist without any worries.

Except for two people.

A dark shape flew amongst the trees of the forest, moving at speeds comparable to an automobile on a highway. It bounced off of the tall pines, generating a soft _tap-tap_ with every impact. Its journey through the stalwart guardians of the wilderness that was the firest finally came to a halt when it perched itself on a particularly sturdy branch. The figure's tailwind finally caught up to it, and a shower of crimson rose petals blew past its crouching form, its red cloak and cape billowing out and around it.

Ruby rose from her crouch to her full height. Very slowly, she set about stretching her arms, then her shoulders, back, and neck. She needed to be limber for what she was about to do.

The night was mostly silent. The average person would have reported the mere chirping of crickets and the eerie creaking of trees being pushed around by the wind. Almost everything was slumbering peacefully in the region. That is, _almost_ everything.

Ruby had tracked a dark, grimy presence all the way to out here. She would describe the thing she felt as... greasy, in a way. It wasn't easily explainable, but it was clear that it spewed hatred, disgust, and a desire to destroy everywhere it went. It was an aura of darkness that Ruby had made herself quite... familiar with in her time at Gravity Falls. After all, it did follow her all the way from Remnant.

Those monsters had somehow, through some sort of manner, managed to come all the way to earth from her home. How? Heck if she knew. Why? See previous answer. That didn't change the fact that the people of Gravity Falls were in danger, and as a Huntress, training or no, she had a commitment to protecting those who couldn't protect themselves. After all, she was the one person on the planet who knew how to fight these things.

Problem was, she couldn't let the citizens know exactly who- or what- she was. In Gravity Falls alone, it would cause mass panic and hysteria. Possibly even a witch hunt, if some of these people were any indication. On a national scale, the government might actually get involved, and that would ruin the quiet tranquility of the small town Ruby had come to call a home of sorts. Heck, the government would also probably disappear Ruby to find out just what made her tick.

Soon after arriving on earth, she had come to realize that she was distinctly different from the humans that lived on the planet.

* * *

 _Oh no. OH CRAP._

 _Soos Ramirez groaned under the crushing weight of the Mystery Shack golf cart. It had fallen off of its supports while he was fixing a rattle that had developed in the undercarriage, and now threatened to give the portly man the slimmest figure of his life. Violently._

 _Ruby sprung into action, dropping the hammer and nails in her hands and leapt off the roof, landing on... the roof of the golf cart._

 _"Ooooofff," moaned Soos._

 _"Sorry!" apologized Ruby. She used her semblance briefly to quickly leap to the ground, and dug her hands into the space underneath the chassis of the diminuitive vehicle. With a grunt, the cart was lifted clean off the ground and over Ruby's head. She set it down, off to the side, and dashed to Soos' side. She shook him slightly, trying to get his attention. "Soos! Soos! Are you okay?! Talk to me, Soos!"_

 _Soos had a thousand-yard stare, but abruptly coughed and stared right at Ruby. "How..." he groaned._

 _"How? How much blood have you lost? How long do you have to live? I dunno, man! I just work here! I don't know first aid! What do I do?!" Ruby was in hysterics. Did she accidentally kill her boss? What would Weiss think? Yang? Would she be able to show her face back home ever again?_

 _"How..." Ruby had to lean in close to hear what Soos was trying to say. "How... did you do that...? That was so... cool..." Ruby looked at the handyman disbelievingly before he abruptly slumped over, unconscious._

 _"What?" Ruby was at a loss for words._

* * *

No Auras, no Huntsmen or Huntsman Academies, no Dust, yet the foul beasts still managed to make their way into a wholly unprepared world. It was like some sort of cosmic deity liked to make Ruby's life hard, no matter where she went or how badly she'd already been kicked while she was down. In her mind, it was up to her to hold the monsters of the darkness at bay, at least until she could find the source.

"Now where did you go...?" Ruby closed her eyes, "listening" with her very soul for her quarry. Back on Remnant, this would've proven difficult, given the large presence of both Grimm and human souls to sift through, but here, there was no Aura to interfere, and just a small, singular presence of inky, foul darkness to detect. "There!" Ruby's eyes flew open, and she aligned herself in the direction of the filthy vibe, unfolding her beloved weapon, the High-Caliber Sniper Scythe Crescent Rose, from behind the small of her back into its full scythe form. In a single, fluid motion, she cycled the bolt, chambering a large round and fired behind herself, sending her flying through the trees once more.

* * *

Dipper's eyes were glued to a small, dimly lit screen, navigating the woods with only subconscious thought. His phone displayed a nondescript map of the area. It was just a monotone gray, but there were just two points of interest visible on the display. A light blue icon, showing his location, and a green one, showing the location of a certain mysterious 'Shack employee.

Tonight was the night Dipper finally would discover his quarry's secrets. It had taken quite a lot of coffee and willpower, but he finally managed to give chase after the elusive girl. Earlier, during dinner, he'd slipped his old phone (since replaced with a newer model) into Ruby's satchel, and patiently ( _sooo boring..._ ) waited for the girl to slip out of the house. He quietly pursued her into the dusk of the forest, using the devices to track each other.

Sure, Ruby was fast, but slowly and surely, Dipper managed to start to catch up to her as time passed. Painfully slowly.

He heard the same loud blasts as before, signaling gunfire. He tried to ignore it, more determined to reach his goal than deterred by fear. As he heard the booming _Pow-Whump!_ of a powerful rifle, he flinched, then grit his teeth. He couldn't back out now! His goal was nearly in sight! Ruby was a mere, what- 15 meters away from-

 _GRAAAAAAOOOOORRRGHHHHH!_

 _What the heck was that?!_ Dipper's concentration on his electronic device was immediately shattered as his eyes darted back and forth through the inky blackness, futilely searching for a possible source of the bestial roar he had heard. However, it would have been impossible to ascertain anything. His eyesight was totally useless in this time of night, and the moonlight left little in the way of useful navigation.

That is, it would have been impossible, had it not been for the pair of glowing, bright red eyes peeking out from some nearby foliage. Dipper gave a yelp of almost purely instinctual fear, and fumbled his phone out of his hands. His hands frantically patted around his person, searching his pockets for a flashlight. When his fingers finally closed around the small metal cylinder, he whipped the device out and pointed it at the eyes and pressed the button on the side.

However, instead of the light illuminating the area _away_ from Dipper, he shined the light _towards_ himself.

"AAARRGH! CRAP!" Dipper turned the light off, then rotated it around in his hand, rubbing his burning eyes with his free hand. _Maybe the light will scare it-_

 _-off?_ Dipper activated the light once more, finally revealing the creature that possessed those haunting red orbs. It was a pitch-black furry creature, rippling in muscles that threatened to explode from its dark form with power. It was covered in a multitude of bone-like pieces, each covered in red tribal-like patterns, attached to its body like a macabre armor. Its form resembled that of a werewolf from folklore, with a hunched figure and an air of savagery leaking from the very air that surrounded its body. Its crimson eyes glared at Dipper with untold malice from behind its bone helmet.

Dipper let out a yelp of terror, and tried to run, yet he found himself utterly paralyzed, incapable of fighting this monster, nor fleeing from it. The boy could only watch as the aura of hatred peaked and the monster visibly tensed up to spring for the younger Pines twin. He closed his eyes as he waited for the inevitable claws and teeth of the beast to attack him.

He flinched when he heard the sound of something piercing flesh, but tentatively cracked his eyes open when he didn't feel any pain. What he saw surprised him. There, standing between Dipper and the now wounded monster, was a figure in a blood red cloak, holding a positively _massive_ farming-style scythe, possessing the same color of red as the figure's clothes. The blade pointed upwards, and the shaft was held at a low angle, pointing the head at the forest floor. The creature now sported a nasty-looking gash across its chest, which had started to billow smoke, and snarled at the cloaked figure.

Dipper recognized that cloak! Ruby was wearing that when she slipped out of the Mystery Shack; he saw it through the window of the attic as he waited for Ruby to try to leave.

Dipper stared in awe and disbelief as Ruby readied her weapon and rotated the head behind her. His ears rang as it released a _CRACK!_ similar to the gunshots from before. Simultaneously, Ruby propelled herself toward the nightmare-wolf in a flurry of red flower petals. Dipper found himself unable to do anything except to just watch the battle unfold from there.

Ruby flew past the wolf, and the beast sported yet another smoking gash. Another gunshot rang out from the other side, and again the beast was wounded. _Bang. Slash. Snarl._ The process, with the gentle grace of a ballet dancer, and the cold precision of a factory automaton, repeated a couple more times before the creature grew fed up with the girl's fighting prowess, and struck out with a razor-sharp claw. However, where in one instant stood Ruby Rose, the next one only saw the claw stirring ruby rose petals. Confused, the monster frantically looked around it until its gaze turned skyward asa it perceived a metal, clanking, ratcheting sound.

High above the wolf creature, Ruby appeared to hover in the air, her scythe held along the length of her arms in an extended, more weapon-like mode. For a moment, the moonlight framed her figure and her cape fluttered about her form like a pair of butterfly wings. The girl was dressed in a very gothic sort of way. She wore some sort of blouse-corset combo in black and red, respectively, with black lace. Her sleeves were long, covering up everything but her pale, slender hands and fingers. The sleeves concealed some sort of undershirt with frilly crimson fabric at the ends. She wore a belt with a multitude of elongated gray bullets that Dipper could not identify, along with a rectangular cloth pouch and a stylized silver rose emblem that Dipper recognized from her headphones earlier. She had a thigh-length, frilly black skirt with red ends, under which her legs were covered with dark stockings that retreated under her skirt. She wore black combat boots with red lace and soles, and her cloak was pinned to her shoulders with a pair of small, cross-shaped pins.

Dipper thought she looked like an angel of death, in a way.

Abruptly, Ruby angled her scythe to the sky and fired skyward, propelling her into a downwards, horizontal spiral that moved too quickly for the boy to see. The spinning wheel of death flew at the monster, which attempted to block with its forearms.

There was a sickening squelching sound as metal met muscle mass and started to saw through the flesh. However, the block was an exercize in futility, as after an equally sickening _Crack!_ , the forearms were sawed clean off. The circle of death continued rending into the creature's body; Ruby raked at the beast's skull armor with a grinding noise not unlike that of someone sharpening a blade. A couple of seconds later, Dipper heard the _Snap!_ of the dense plates giving way, and- almost too quickly for him to keep up- saw Ruby slip her scythe into a more conventional rifle form, and place two large bullets into its centre.

The creature let out a bestial snarl and roared at its opponent, whose hood flipped back from the force of only its cry of unadulterated rage, revealing Ruby's face and her dark hair, which Dipper expected.

What he didn't expect was the appearance of two triangles at the top of her scalp, the same colour as her hair. They looked like... Animal ears? They twitched, and Ruby gritted her teeth before letting out a scream of defiance and charged at the dark monster, expanding her scythe into its full form and raising it overhead, firing a shot and pushing it violently down, aiming at the crack in its skull. The blow drove the blade into its skull and through its chest cavity, then stopped; the beast was dead, and its body shortly disintegrated.

Ruby stood there, panting, out of breath.

Dipper suddenly heard a shrill scream, and saw Ruby tense up and stand up straight as a ramrod. It took him a moment to realize that it was _him_ that was screaming, and clamped an arm over his mouth to stifle those screams.

"Holy moly... Dipper, is that you?!" In a figurative flash, Ruby'd stowed away her scythe and wrapped her cloak fully around her body, her hood covering her head. "Ummm... this is all a dream, you see? Just go back to bed, okay?" Her tone tried to be convincing, but it was all marred by barely-concealed panic.

"Yeah, sure, and next you'll tell me that you're _not_ a superpowered demihuman who hunts monsters for a living."

"Yes! Exactly! It'll all be-" Ruby's plastered on grin and attempt to be as compelling as possible melted away. "You're sassing me, aren't you." Dipper shrugged. Ruby sighed. "You want answers, don't you?" Dipper nodded. Ruby sighed. "You want them _right now_ , don't you?" Dipper nodded again.

Ruby sighed. Again. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

Ruby Rose and Dipper Pines sat in the living room of the Mystery Shack. They had set two chairs on opposite sides of an oaken coffee table, and they gave each other long, hard stares. Well, Dipper did, anyway. Ruby just fidgeted in her seat, tried to avoid eye contact with the much smaller boy, and tried not to look as guilty as possible.

"So what you're trying to tell me is- and tell me if I'm getting any of this wrong- you come from another country- no, another _planet_ \- where humans fight an eternal war with creatures of darkness called Grimm using the power of their souls as weapons."

"It's humans and faunus, actually."

"Right, right, right." Dipper leaned forward in his chair, and pointed at the two black-furred, red-tipped triangles on Ruby's head. "And you're one of them? What are they, anyway?" One of them flicked, as if to emphasize his point.

"Ummm, sorta?" She sheepishly ran a hand through her hair, and said, "Faunus are people, almost just like you, just with some... extra features. And I wasn't always one. It just sorta happened."

"How does that 'sorta happen'?" Dipper was perplexed. He'd deduced that the faunus were an ethnicity, but what confused him was her words. _'Wasn't always one'? The heck does that even mean?_ Dipper thought.

"Well, I was born and lived as a regular human- well as regular as humans are back where I live- without extra parts for nearly sixteen years. I attended Beacon Academy as a Huntress-in-training for most of a year until one day a group of terrorists destroyed everything that my friends and I held dear. We were all searching for answers, in our own ways. Me and three of my friends set out to a nearby-ish kingdom for ours. It was on the way..."

* * *

 _Crap. Crap, crap crapcrapcrapcrapcrap._

 _Ruby was lost. Somehow or another, she'd gotten separated from Jaune, Nora, and Ren while out in the wilderness while fighting Grimm. The forest, filled with amber-leaved trees, moaned and groaned with the life that occupied it, which wasn't exactly a comforting idea given the fact that Grimm roamed this area._

 _"JAUNE! NORA! REN!" Ruby shouted. Sure, her cries would attract more Grimm, but she knew that they could handle whatever came their way if they were all together. Ruby walked along the forest trail, calling for her friends all the while, until she came to a clearing._

 _The ground was unmarked, its dirt a dull beige, lacking any pockmarks or sizable divets, almost as if someone had flattened the land. In the centre of the clearing stood, or rather sat, a strange statue, covered in vines and weeds. Intrigued, Ruby approached the object after a cursory glance at her surroundings to make sure that there were no Grimm lying in wait, ready to pounce on her._

 _A closer inspection only let to more confusion for the young Huntress. It was a statue, but not of a man, woman, child, animal, or Grimm. Instead, it appeared to be a triangle with a single eye, adorned with a simple bowtie and exceptionally tall top hat. Its slender, featureless hand was outstretched, and clutched in its grasp was a single, uncut Burn Dust crystal. Curious, the Huntress did not hesitate to attempt to pry the Dust from its grasp, which left the fist with little resistance._

 _What Ruby experienced was unexpected. Upon close inspection, there appeared to be nothing wrong with, or special about, the Dust, besides the fact that it was, in fact, Dust. However, Ruby did not expect a wave of nausea and drowsiness to overcome her senses. Her muddled brain practically demanded her to take a quick, literal dirtnap, and she was happy to comply. Ruby let out an_ oomph! _as her limp form hit the ground, and she lost consciousness; the crystal fell out of her grip and fell beside her as she passed out._

 _When Ruby came to, she immediately tried to sit up, only to experience a piercing pain as an ache punched its way through her skull. She clamped a hand on her head in an attempt to stop the dagger drilling a hole in her brain, only to feel a strange, new sensation on her head._

 _Ruby whipped out her scroll and activated the forward-facing camera function as a mirror. She was taken aback by what she saw._

 _On her head were two distinct, black fuzzy triangles, that ended in red fur at the ends. Ruby gasped and recoiled in surprise, but was instantly summoned back to the scroll's screen as she noticed that her canines were elongated slightly and pointed, not that unlike a dog's._

What on Remnant...? _she thought._

* * *

"...And after wandering for... longer than I would be happy to admit, I stumbled across the Mystery Shack and Soos took me in. I help around every so often, but sometimes, somehow, Grimm manage to find their way to this place, and I take care of the problem so everyone can sleep easy." Ruby finished.

"So... you mentioned that faunus are part animal," Dipper said, "What kind did you turn into then?"

"Wolf," Ruby replied, a little too quickly. "Don't ask." Something about the way she appeared flustered and embarrassed convinced Dipper not to pry. He left the topic alone.

"So yeah, that's the gist of it," Ruby concluded. "Can you keep this a secret between us two?"

Dipper nodded. "Sure! We just need to make sure Mabel doesn't get a word of this, or else-"

"Too Late!" called a cheerful voice from the stairway. As Dipper feared, it was his twin, Mabel Pines. "Don't worry, your secrets're safe with me!" she proclaimed, strolling into the living room and pointing a thumb proudly to her chest and straightening, as if giving a military salute.

"H-How long were you listening?" Ruby hesitantly asked.

"Oh, you know, only enough to hear literally every single word," Mabel replied, speeding up the last four words as if to emphasize her point.

"Great. Now I have to trust two people to keep my secrets from the rest of the world..." Ruby groaned.

"Four."

"...What?" Ruby almost choked on the word.

"You have four people to keep your secret now! I brought Candy and Grenda along for the ride!" She gestured to a nearby cardboard box, underneath which sprang Grenda, Candy in a green pack strapped to the former's back. You could almost _hear_ how hard Ruby smacked herself in the face at this.

"We know everything! It's like we're defying the CIA! I feel like a spy!" Grenda happily shouted to the world.

"It's like you're from an anime!" Candy added. She giggled.

"As if I-! You know what? Just don't tell another soul about what you saw tonight."

"Why? You'd be sooo popular!" Mabel had stars in her eyes and a heaping helping of glitter on her face by now. Damn was she excited.

"No! I don't want any attention! That's the whole point of a secret, anyway!"

"But, you could-"

"NO!" Ruby screamed. Over the argument, neither Dipper, nor Mabel, or Candy or Grenda or Ruby noticed the front door swing open, even with its creaky hinges until a boisterous voice made itself known.

"Kids! We're back, and we brought _souveneirs_!" called the voice of Stanley Pines, former conman and professional swindler, who was dressed in an outdoorsman's outfit: green camouflage cargo trousers and a tan vest with a multitude of pockets, complete with a safari-style beige hat with a pair of aviators perched atop it. His own twin, Stanford Pines, wore a matching outfit. Both sported wide grins and each carried a heavy duffel bag in each hand at their sides. Soon, however, the grins faded into expressions of puzzlement as both parties made eye contact- including a certain recently faunus-ified Huntress, whose mouth was currently agape with disbelief, showing off her small fangs.

"Uh... Did we come at a bad time?" Stanford Pines, six-fingered scientist and explorer, gingerly asked.

Ruby and Dipper were speechless. Ruby could only slump back in her chair and cover her face in her hands. "This really is not my day..." she mumbled under her breath.

* * *

 **AN: Well after a long-ass time of waiting and writing and tearing out my own hair, here's finally the next chapter of Rose Falls, Oregon. Well, actually, you guys have been jerks, so here's two instead of one like you asked. Let's see how _you_ like not being listened to! Ha!**

 **All jokes aside, I'll probably be unable to write or post anything until August, so this'll have to satisfy your literary urges. I'm sorry, but my mother is very insistent on our trip to Korea, so there you have it. You can't say no to the lady. I apologize, but hopefully, the trip will give me some fresh ideas. See you guys later!**

 **Question/Comment Corner:**

 **TypicalHarshReview:** I'm glad someone is finally putting two great fandoms and smashing them together. But just so we are clear, I will kill you if you don't update. Have fun!

 **Ummm... Thanks. I appreciate it? Just... please don't kill me. :(**

 **avidreaded:** This is pretty fucking awesome and Dipper's bat is prolly about to get cut clean in half.

 **Thank you. I love the enthusiasm this fic is getting. Sorry the bat thing didn't work out quite like you expected.**

 **Guest:** Man, you put in spot on. Nice!

 **Thank you! I'm glad you think it's accurate!**

 **ultima-owner:** I love this idea. Ruby is using her "baby" crescent rose, I bet.

 **Oh you bet your ass she is.**

 **Grymloq:** Continue this. I'm begging you.

 **No. Chapter 1's as far as this goes. :(**

 **JIMMYJAMSTER728:** Not bad, will keep a look out for this as time goes on, keep up on writing.

 **Will do!**

 **Lean:** Already a great start

 **Well, I try my best.**

 **Brandon Vortex:** ohh i would deffently wanted to see how it goes

 **You got your wish, buddy.**

 **wiljeeenbroodje:** interesting... I like to see where this goes

 ***sultry voice* You like what you see~?**

 **grimlock987:** i am going to like this (cackles like a mad man)

 **You wanna go bro? I can out-crazy you any day! 1v1 me Dust 2 Bruh.**

 **Violet-the-Hero:** Ah I really like this so far! I hope up see more!

 **Yes... Good... Feed my desire to be wanted. That's it...**

 **javegar453:** Hi, loved Gravity Falls and I love RWBY so I can't wait to see what you have in store, can't wait for the next chapters :)

 **Here they are. Enjoy!**

 **KuletXCore:** HI!

i like this story idea.  
Faved and Followed.

 **:)**

 **'Till next time! Ciao!**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia**


	4. Chapter 4: The Day After

Chapter 4: The Day After

 **Hello all you beautiful people. I've finally risen out of a shallow, unmarked grave in South Korea, hitchhiked back on a cruise liner to the 'States using a banana as a bribe, and sat down at my PC to bring you another chapter of Rose Falls, Oregon! I'm not really feeling all that good about this one compared to the others, but I hope you enjoy.**

 **P.S. I don't own either RWBY or Gravity Falls, and I do not intend to make money with this fanfiction.**

* * *

It was a beautiful morning in Gravity Falls.

In the city, the streets were as still as statues as the denizens of the town stumbled through their morning routines. Many of them reached for a morning cup of joe to get them through the day.

In the woods the trees swayed gently in the morning breeze and their pine needles glistened like Christmas lights in the rays of the sunrise. Choirs of birds chirruped on their perches upon the branches. Their voices rang out like angels' in their early morning call.

The sun's rays bled through the Mystery Shack's break room window, landing upon the face of a slumbering Ruby Rose. However, she didn't stir; she slept with serenity courtesy of a sleep mask covering her eyelids. She slept for a few minutes more until the warbling song of the early birds reached her ears. While for others, the birds call would barely register in their hearing from indoors, Ruby's enhanced senses easily picked up the sounds and amplified them into an aural alarm clock of sorts.

Ruby groaned, slipping her mask over her forehead and turning over on the sofa, her arm flopping out over the side. She'd foregone the bed for the plumped-up chair in her exhaustion and dropped like a rock, utterly exhausted from the previous night's explanation (exposition) dump to the rest of the Mystery Shack's inhabitants. That is, until Melody made an appearance and forced everyone to hit the hay before they all suffered insomnia-iduced brain damage or something. Some people- *cough* Dipper and Ford *cough*- probably still had some sort of unsated curiosity left over, and would need to be dealt with.

Groggily, she rose from the bed, stretched, and yawned.

Ruby trudged to the bathroom opposite the portal that led to the rest of the 'Shack. She splashed water on her face to jolt herself into wakefulness, opened the medicine cabinet, withdrew her toothpaste and brush, then let it swing closed. Ruby stared herself down in the cabinet's mirror. A haggard Ruby Rose, with dirtied combat clothes that she'd neglected to change out of the night before, complete with drooped wolf ears and glassy eyes, stared back. Ruby scowled; the mirror copied her. She grunted, then left.

Ruby half-limped, half-walked to her dresser and opened it, revealing a smattering of clothes she called a wardrobe. The dresser displayed whatever clothes she'd managed to accumulate over the time she'd been in Gravity Falls. A pair of dingy black and white polka-dotted pajamas hung from the door, a pile of jeans sat in a heap at the bottom of the shelves, a pair of worn grey sneakers and dusty red sandals simply sat on said pile, and a rainbow of t-shirts hung from coat hangers on a wooden bar. A moment's deliberation saw her removing a black t-shirt bearing her signature rose emblem in red and a pair of blue jean shorts and the sneakers. The huntress quickly changed into the casual wear and inspected herself in a large, full-size portrait mirror. Finding her appearance satisfactory in the shiny surface, Ruby snatched up her Mystery Shack pine tree cap and left. She may not have to keep her secret hidden from anyone in the 'Shack anymore prior to opening time, but she still felt naked without it sometimes.

Ruby finally started to walk with more of a purpose as she made her way to the 'Shack's kitchen. There, she found the reassuring presence of her most beloved machine in Gravity Falls (sans Crescent Rose, of course), the coffee maker. On some days, Ruby almost seriously considered praising its sleek black design as an instrument of a higher power.

The tired huntress quickly made herself a serving of a medium-dark blend. While she sat at the counter and perched on a wooden stool and waited for the heavenly beverage to finish brewing, a very curious presence invaded the sanctity of Ruby's coffee session.

The younger Pines twins sauntered into the dingy kitchen. Honestly, they looked no worse for the wear that was the eternal struggle of waking up early in the morning (a struggle Ruby found harder and harder to abide by due to her... unique situation), bearing no bags under their eyes nor a drunken sway in their gait.

Ruby mentally groaned. She sighed as the technically-teens immediately launched into a rapid fire machine-gun volley of questions. Ruby slumped on her stool and slammed her head against the counter.

 _POW!_

Ruby winced at the pain, but luckily even when absolutely knackered beyond all comprehension, her Aura still worked overtime to keep the huntress from killing herself with a mere non-combative concussion. The best part was that it got the Pines twins to stop talking for a moment as their shocked brains struggled to comprehend the suddenness of Ruby's self-destructive action. To stop them from saying anything else, Ruby held up a hand and mentally counted down the last few seconds until she could indulge herself in her unhealthy caffeine addiction.

 _Three... Two... One..._

 _Ding!_ went the coffee machine as it dispensed a cup of steaming hot joe. A bleary-eyed Ruby rose from her seat atop the stool, made her way to the glorious chalice of caffeinated energy, poured herself a mug of coffee, dropped in her preffered sweeteners (cream and five sugars, naturally), and threw it back, downing nearly the entire ceramic container in a matter of a few seconds. Ruby felt a bitter tang, with a sweet garnish, flood its way down her throat. Her eyes widened as abruptly, awareness flooded back into her mind under the rejuvenating effects of the caffeinated beverage. Her weariness was gone, replaced with what she knew and felt was her usual pep and cheer. Ruby set her mug on the counter, ran a napkin over her mouth, and grinned, almost ferally.

"So I'm going into town to take care of a few things," Ruby said, "and if you wanna help, you're welcome to come along!" The twins had to process this again. It was like the Ruby they had just witnessed earlier- grumpy and weary- vanished, only to be replaced with this copy from the twins' first day back in the the 'Shack- cheerful and driven and excited. Finally, Dipper broke the silence with an eloquent response.

"Uhhhhh..." He said. He wasn't so sure that he wanted to be so close to Ruby Rose on her caffeine high so soon, but he figured it probably couldn't be too dangerous.

Probably.

Ruby snatched up her cap, gingerly fitted it onto her head, and dashed back around the corner. A moment later, she returned with some sort of handbag in tow and a bag filled with some sort of metal... things, as evidenced by the tinkling sounds they made as Ruby swung it around.

"Ready? Let's go! We can talk along the way. Hurry up, slowpokes! Get going!" She dashed out of the 'Shack, with a wary pair of twins in tow.

* * *

The road wasn't even paved to the town. It was a glorified, repurposed hiking trail that had sparsely been adorned with the bare-minimum legally-required amount of traffic and safety signs, with some metal rails here and there if someone could be in danger of falling off a cliff or something. Its beige dirt surface, worn down by time and weather, was pockmarked with shallow divets and potholes and deep, narrow gouges torn out of the earth through the steady passage of various exotic offroad vehicles. Ironically, the terrain was nearly unnavigable, save for the hardiest of buses and buggies (and the Mystery Shack golf cart, oddly enough).

Ruby Rose, Dipper Pines, and Mabel Pines marched down this beaten-down path. They were followed by a certain... swinely friend of theirs.

"Mabel, I don't think we really needed to bring Waddles along with us," said Dipper, "When did you even have time to pick him up?"

"I didn't! He followed me from the house! It's so _adorable_! I'm like his mommy!"

Dipper sighed. "It's probably because you keep stuffing ice cream in your face and it keeps getting everywhere."

Mabel, who was in the process of unwrapping an ice cream sandwich, huffed indignantly and pouted at her brother. "I don't know what you're talking about!" she protested. She finished peeling the frozen confectionary, and gave it to Waddles, who ate it up like there was no tomorrow.

"Hey, can pigs even eat ice cream?" Ruby curiously leaned over the animal, watching it consume the ice cream with vigor.

"Pigs can eat dang near anything, Ruby." Dipper scratched his head. "And you don't have a problem with chocolate or anything?"

"Thank whoever's watching from above, no. If I was, Mabel would've killed me five times over by sneaking me cookies."

Eventually, the trio of 'Shackers reached the town. The weathered dirt path suddenly yielded to a comparatively clean, paved asphalt road. It was a somewhat bleached gray from many an Oregonian summer's sun, and completed its image of emaciation with a series of cracks running along the barely-serviceable pavement. The road was flanked with sidewalks of a lighter color and better condition- evidently, walking was the kryptonite of Gravity Falls' citizens, and everyone owned a motor vehicle of some sort. The trees and shrubbery of the forest gave way to houses and brick walls as rural nature gave way to suburbs. Ruby stepped onto the sidewalk and headed down a particular street of the town with the Pines twins in tow.

"So that thing you have to do today," Dipper asked, "What exactly is it?"

"You'll know when we get there. I promise."

"Uhh, okay then."

Eventually, they passed a grocery store. Its fluorescent lights glowed harshly, casting the interior and quite a bit of the store front in a stark white luster, despite the harsh glare of daylight. The store proudly displayed a selection of its "fresh" produce in its crystal-clear windows, offering things such as "Bottom-Feeder Prices, Bottom-Feeder Seafood!", "50% off 15% aged meat!" and "Mostly Genuine Cold-Cuts Here!". This early in the day, only a few patrons actually managed to take advantage of such "deals", and they trotted about inside, lazily taking various foodstuffs off of the shelves.

"Is this it?" Dipper asked uncertainly.

"Nope!" Ruby cheerfully replied, popping the "p". Dipper and Mabel shared a look, but they shrugged, and continued following the merry huntress through the town.

A little ways down, the three of them walked past a laundromat. It was a nondescript dull, jungle green box of a building, with loud, tumbling washing machines sitting in neat rows upon rows on the walls like so many matches in a... well, matchbox.

"That bag wouldn't be full of Soos' dry cleaning, would it?" Mabel inquired.

"Nope!" Ruby happily replied again.

Mabel breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. That'd be _boring_." She ignored the glare Dipper shot her.

"Seriously, though," Dipper demanded, "where exactly are you taking us, Ruby?"

"You'll see."

Dipper raised his brow quizzically. "You're not telling us what it is because it's illegal, are you?"

That gave Ruby pause. "Uhh, no! Not exactly, but I'm tight with the owner, so we should be good." Dipper gave a little _mmm-hmm_ in response, and rolled his eyes when he thought Ruby wasn't looking.

She was. "C'mon, Dipstick. It's _fine_ , just... don't touch anything when we're there, k?"

* * *

"Ruby, I don't think we should be allowed in there."

"Dipper, I already told you, it's fine."

"We shouldn't be hanging around here! I mean, shouldn't we need, like, photo ID just to get in, or something?"

"Dipper, we're not going to a nightclub! Stop making it sound like we're breaking the law again!"

"Sorry Mabel," Dipper sighed. "I just don't think they're supposed to allow people under 18 to even step foot in there, y'know?"

"What are you guys... break the law _again?_ " Ruby sighed in exasperation. "Whatever, just keep cool, and follow my lead."

The three teens walked into a whitewashed, dull, shag-carpeted building. It was wholly unremarkable and would have flown under literally anyone's radar, had it not been for one crucial detail.

 _The Shot Bod_ was filled to the brim with weapons. Rifles, sidearms, and shotguns of all shapes and sizes adorned black, skeletal wire-frame racks like birds sitting upon their perches in cages- for the world to see, lust over, and buy in a snap decision to adorn their rooms with an actually living creature- , minus the cages. Dipper could make out a scary-looking black rifle in one corner, a scary-looking silver pistol in another, and a scary-looking wooden stockless shotgun standing sentry over the entire gun shop like a prized stuffed hunting prize on the wall over a gleaming pearly-white countertop where the act of buying a gun would presumably take place. To be honest, he almost visibly wet himself at the presence of so many shooty things before he remembered that they were probably unloaded. _Probably_.

Ruby was ignoring all the weapons as best she could, so that she could get on with her errand. She still couldn't keep a mirthful- and somewhat lustful- gleam out of her eye, but she could settle.

The counter itself was transparent, displaying a small selection of sidearms of a large number of shape, type, purpose, and caliber. Standing behind the counter was a man, wearing a faded yellow tank top bearing the American flag, and predictably, the word "AMERICA" stenciled in big blocky capital letters, and a matching stars-and-stripes baseball cap. He had a mane of umber waist-length hair that even Yang might have whistled at, a protruding chin, stubble, and a crooked tooth. On his tank top was a name tag, plainly displaying, in neat cursive, the name "Marcus". He glared balefully at Ruby from behind the barrier of the counter.

"Oh dude, we totally didn't get that guy's name last summer," Mabel whispered to her brother. "All this time, we just called him 'America guy'. Ow!" she hissed the last part, as Dipper gave his sister a quick stamp of his sneaker on her own glitter-coated black shoe to silence her.

"Waddaya want now, kid?" Marcus practically snarled.

Ruby, to her credit, didn't give an inch to the older and taller man.

"I need better bullets," she calmly stated, matter-of-factly. It wasn't a request, but a veritable law of the universe, which was quite the delivery for the squeaky-voiced, excitable huntress.

Marcus raised a brow. "Again? I already gave you some M82 Mk. 211 stuff last week!"

"Yeah, and I still need something else." Ruby heaved the duffel bag she had lugged around town over and onto the counter. It hit the glass with a bang and a rattle, and the surface bent ever so slightly from the weight. She unzipped the bag, revealing its contents: tinkling, faintly gleaming, copper-colored, brass rifle shell casings. Big ones.

"I'm gonna call in that favor now. See if you can reload these with something with more _oomph_."

"I don't think this is worth a truck, Ruby," Marcus retorted.

"I think this is worth a truck, Mark," Ruby echoed. "since you _really_ needed to get to your cousins' wedding in Washington that week, and your Ford woulda broken down at least _six_ times on the road."

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes, shaking his head. "Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby," he all but scolded. "I'm already probably breaking 30 state laws by giving you this kinda ammo. Maybe I'd be more trusting of you if you actually told me what the actual _he-_ " he stopped himself, eyeing Dipper and Mabel, "- _heck_ you were shootin' at with these loads."

"Bow chicka bow-wow!" cried out a customer from across the room.

"Shut up, Lavernius!" shouted Marcus back. "You know the only reason I even let you in here is 'cause your friend's good with computers and he's less of a jerk when you're there."

"...Ignoring all that," Ruby continued. "I can't exactly tell you that. It's a matter of the town's safety."

Marcus crossed his arms and squinted his eyes, Clint Eastwood style, "Well if you can't tell me what it is, then you're SOL, kid."

"C'mon, Mark! I need this stuff."

"Why? You're sixteen, for goodness' sake! You should be fawning over dolls, or finding your path in life, albeit probably not very wisely, or something! This _sure as heck_ ain't a scientific curiosity itch you're tryina scratch here! _What in the world_ are you even shooting this stuff out of, anyway? I don't think a petite little girl like you would be able to handle a big, heavy rifle like a Barrett!"

"I can handle whatever size rifle I want! You don't know what I can take, Mark."

"Bow chicka bow-wow!" came Lavernius, again.

"TUCKER! SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" admonishouted both Ruby and Marcus.

Marcus took a deep breath before finally saying, "Ruby, you seem like a good kid, so I'll cut you some slack. I'll see what I can scrounge up, but I'm telling the cops everything I know if you come back into town one day missing a few fingers."

"That's all I needed to hear, Mark. Thanks."

Marcus waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, Yeah. Just keep it on the down low, okay?"

"You got it." Ruby winked and gave a thumbs up to the older man, who grunted, yet his eyes sparkled with... approval? Mirth? It was hard to tell.

"Now, unless you're buying something, which I find _highly_ unlikely, kindly leave, now. Okay?"

"Yeah, we're going, just let me get a magazine or something."

* * *

Dipper, Mabel, and Ruby finally left the gun shop. From the outside, the money-fueled armory, called the _Shot Bod_ (Marcus didn't pick the name. He swore it. It was his uncle. He owned the place, so it wasn't his say, anyway), looked bog-standard, with the only defining feature being the bright green neon sign bearing the store's name and a simple bull's-eye target in red neon. Ruby, having been relieved of her load of brass shells, stretched and rolled her shoulders, sighing in the simple pleasure of resting her aching muscles. Her Aura only got her so far, what with the 500-or-so shells weighing her down.

"Sooo..." Dipper said. "That was... quite the interesting encounter. How do you even know that guy?"

Ruby shrugged. "I helped Marcus with a few things, and he gives me a few dubiously-legal things that I need here and there. I think that everyone in town owes me something, one way or another, save for the Northwests and Old Man McGucket."

"Well, so now that we've got that out of the way, what now?"

"Hmm," Ruby mused for a second. "My shoulders are kinda stiff, so I think I'm going to go train. Wanna watch?"

The twins looked at each other, honestly wondering what "training" would look like. Eventually, Mabel gave a shrug and a small grin, while Dipper raised a brow and smirked.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Ruby. "C'mon, let's go back to the 'Shack."

* * *

 _THWACK!_

The heavy oak pole slammed into the oversized fence post Ruby had commandeered to use as a dummy, rattling it and fluttering about the paper with a hand-drawn caricature of a beowolf attached to it. Its impact shuddered along the training weapon's length, and Ruby could feel the muscles in her arms and back protesting against the strain while her bones debated amongst themselves if going on strike was a good idea, before her Aura silenced their complaints. The huntress sharply yanked back on the pole, picturing in her mind's eye that there was a large and deadly and crimson scythe blade at the end of the oversized stick instead of a measly little splotch of white paint meant to signify where a blade would be on her _real_ weapon. She kinda wished that it was her real scyfle, just so that she could satisfyingly cleave the dummy in two. For now, she would have to settle for a few loose shavings and splinters coming loose from the main body of the post.

Ruby swung the pole around to face behind her and readied herself for a strike to the other side of her target.

 _CRACK!_

Again, Ruby's body protested under the strain of her weapon's impacts, and again her Aura silenced it. She committed herself to a couple more warm-up hits, each time _thwack_ ing the post hard enough to make it vibrate against its earthen foundation with a hollow thrum.

Ruby brought back the staff to strike once more, but this time was different. Where her previous strikes had been deliberately slow and hard, she disappeared into a blur of rose petals and smacked the dummy naught but a foot away from it.

The nimble huntress leapt back, anticipating a phantom counter, before disappearing again. She reappeared, crouched down, practice scythe held low and parallel to the ground, about ten feet away from the post. She closed the distance and "slashed" upwards at an angle at her stationary opponent before rushing past the wooden dummy and disappearing once more.

Ruby rushed in once more, this time ducking her head low, so as to avoid a strike from an imaginary Beowolf's claws, and moved her weapon down low in a long, sweeping strike, meant to take the opponent's legs out from under them. It connected with a _Crack!_ and Ruby backflipped away from the post, cradling the training scythe close to her chest.

The girl then decided to experiment. She ran a small circle around the post, before rapidly accelerating with a liberal application of her signature Semblance. She continued to run circles around the dummy, enveloping it in a cyclone of rose petals, which obscured the thing from view, before finally stepping back from her handiwork.

Before the tornado of roses could die down, Ruby halted herself, then crouched down, low to the ground. She pushed all of her excess Aura into her legs and feet, making them softly glow with energy, and pushed down, powering a leap upwards. She fed velocity into her jump with her Semblance, and rose a good foot over the surrounding pine trees before, inevitably, gravity overtook her. Yet she anticipated this and angled the tip of her "scythe" directly at the head of the wooden post, imagining it as a creature of Grimm and her weapon as Crescent Rose, fully extended into a more spear-like form.

Her aim was true, and the training scythe's head landed smack-dab in the center of the circular post's top. Just before impact, however, Ruby'd forced her Aura into her staff, causing it to become rigid and strong as an iron pole. The impact was to strong for the post, and eventually the dummy would have to give.

And give it did. With a resounding _CRACK!_ the training post came apart into two uneven, jagged pieces, and fell to the ground. The hand-drawn Beowolf doodle, which had flown off of the dummy when it got bisected, fluttered, like a butterfly, through the air for a second before Ruby caught the scrap of paper in one final swing of her training scythe. It stuck to the wooden pole like a piece of tape, and hung on for dear, pulpy, life.

Ruby finally deftly twirled the training weapon in her hands, and planted one end of it stiffly in the ground next to her. It slid into the dirt, generating a small dust cloud, like a knife through hot butter and stuck. She dusted herself off, and patted down her clothes, which would decidedly need a thorough washing before another use.

 _Dang, and this was my favorite shirt_ , Ruby thought crossly.

There was a half a minute of complete silence until Mabel Pines abruptly erupted into applause. The others with her- Dipper, Soos, and the elder Pines twins- followed suit, in that order, in a show of acclamation (that is, aside from Stanley Pines. The former conman was content enough with merely a warm-ish look of approval).

Ruby kicked herself out of her reverie and quickly performed a theatrical bow, complete with an exaggerated flourish at the end, a playful grin etched onto her delicate features the whole while.

"Whoa," Dipper simply breathed. He hadn't seen a ballet of combat like that ever before in his life. Not even the metric tons of Kung-Fu movies he'd seen in his time had even come _close_.

"That. Was. AWESOME!" Mabel excitedly cheered. "You were all like POW! SMACK! WHOOSH! CRACK! OTHER EXCITING SOUND EFFECTS!" The girl emphasized her exhilaration with mimed phantom blows and strikes to accompany her words and shouts, in typical Mabel Pines fashion.

"Yeah, it was kinda something," Soos added, trying to downplay his own exuberance by acting casual, but the big, goofy grin on his face gave away his true feelings.

Stanford and Stanley never said anything, but the former started to furiously take down notes in a handbook after ceasing his applause, and the latter merely took a sip of his Pitt-Cola soda can.

Mabel, still high on the pure adrenaline of seeing Ruby fight- even if it was just practice- hopped up and down like a caffeinated rabbit before finally saying, "Oh. My. Gosh. Who taught you how to even _do_ that?!"

"My uncle taught me a very long time ago," Ruby explained, a wistful look in her eye, and a hint of forlornness in her voice. "My sister and I grew up hearing stories of our parents' escapades as Huntsmen, but my uncle's adventures were particularly... interesting. Needless to say, I loved- and still _do_ love- his stories, and I asked him to train me when I was six. His weapon is an oversized scythe, so you can see where I got the influence for my Crescent Rose." The young huntress cast a glance at Ford. "You know, you've been pretty silent. Aren't you curious as well?"

Ford just kept scribbling in his book, appearing to not have heard Ruby.

"Ahem, Ford, she's talkin' to you," Stan said, reaching over and flicking his brother's arm to get his attention.

"...Huh? Uh, no. Soos made sure to explain everything to us while you were out," Ford finally replied.

* * *

 _"And so there we- me, Abuelita, Melody- were, all sitting around the living room, doing our own things- I was watchin' cartoons, by the way- when all of a sudden, we hear this huge_ BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM _coming from the front door! I was all like, 'Whoa! Something's gonna bust down the door!' So we go, and there's Ruby, her clothes all torn and she was beat up and stuff and she's like, 'You guys got anything to eat?' and she passes out, like right then and there, and I'm freaking out, but then Abuelita comes along, looks at her for a second, picks her up, and-"_

* * *

"...It was... an _interesting_ explanation of the developments, I'd have to say," Ford remarked.

"Hey, Ruby," Dipper began.

"Yeah?"

"Is there any chance of you being, uh, able to teach me anything? Y'know, self-defense and all that?"

Ruby stared at the young boy, puzzled. "Why?"

"Well, I'm not exactly the biggest guy around and people like to pick on me and my own twin sister is stronger than me and my worst enemy last summer was totally relentless-" Dipper rambled, before being cut off when Ruby raised a hand to stop him.

"Dipper, slow down! That's Nora's thing. Last I checked, Anyway, if this guy lives in town, I might be able to talk to him. What's his name?"

Dipper thought about it for a second. "Okay, he's not exactly much of a problem anymore, but his name's Ro-"

"Hey guys! What's hangin'?"

"-bably not important right now. Hey Wendy!"

Wendy Corduroy, who had just walked along the path to the Mystery Shack, gave Dipper a thumbs up. She carried a small red duffel bag, no doubt filled to burst with magazines and stuff to kill time with.

The others gave the teen their own greetings, in turn.

"Waddup, dude!"

"WENDY!"

" _There_ ' _s_ my favorite slacker!"

"Hello, Wendy."

"'Sup, guys! Haven't seen you in a while, Ruby," Wendy said, a hand resting on her hip and a lazy, casual grin thrown onto her face.

Ruby froze up, then hastily, and unsuccessfully, tried to hide her training weapon behind her back. "Oh! Um, hi, Wendy! Long time no see, too!" She attempted nonchalance and leaned on her weapon as if it was just a _really_ big cane. "What's hangin'?"

"Nothin' much, just getting back on the job since finals were _brutal_. I'm surprised that you managed to get the dean to give you all the work a week before everyone else. Man, they thought you were crazy, but I guess you're the lucky one, huh?"

Ruby laughed half-heartedly. "Ha ha, yeah, I wanted to get a jump-start on the summer, y'know?"

Wendy calmly nodded. "I hear that. So what'chu doin' out here, then?"

That gave Ruby pause. She gestured to the split log on the ground. "U-Um, I'm just... C-cutting firewood! Yeah, that's it!"

Wendy cast a suspicious glance around. "Without an axe?"

"Yes," Ruby deadpanned. Her poker face was, however, ruined by the fact that her face was nearly beet red.

Wendy shrugged. "Alright. Whatever floats your boat, then. Say, Soos, shouldn't you be getting ready for the day?"

Soos sat up on the porch couch, then said, "Hey Dipper, what time is it?"

Dipper checked his watch- a large LCD timepiece with a calculator- and answered, "It's 6:18."

Soos, who at the moment was sipping a Pitt Cola, abruptly sprayed soft drink at that. "Oh no, dude! We gotta open up at 6:30!"

Soos dashed to the front door and flung it open in a hurry and ran inside.

"We should help him out," admitted Ford, rising from the couch as well.

"I'd better make sure everything's running all right in there," agreed Stan. They filed through the door after the former handyman.

Ruby took that as an opportunity to avoid further conversation. Scooping up the split wood, the drawing of a beowolf, and the training weapon in her arms, she _dashed_ into the 'Shack as a blur, hollering, "Wait, boss! Be careful with the exhibits out back!" as she went.

Wendy cast a glance at Dipper and Mabel. "What was that about? They seem to be in a hurry."

Dipper shrugged. "You'll either find out on your own, or she'll tell you later. C'mon Mabel, let's go make sure Soos doesn't get a concussion, or something."

" 'Kay!" came his twin's enthusiastic reply. "C'mon, Wendy!"

Wendy grinned at that. Alright then.

* * *

The bus was a rickety, shoddily constructed thing, with little splotches of rust scattered about the place, poking out in little patches here and there in the vehicle's aluminum body. The formerly-leathery plastic seats were dried out and cracked, sometimes peeling and showing off the foam stuffing within the cushions. The vehicle's suspension evidently needed a little work, since it bumped along very roughly and every divot in the ground could be felt throughout its borderline ancient frame.

All in all, it was a deathtrap and an accident just waiting to happen.

The young man sitting in the back row of the bus, sandwiched in between an elderly couple and a young mother and son, tried to pay no mind to this, yet his heart jolted at every crack in the road and turn made too fast that the machine struggled through. However, there was nothing he could really do about it, so he resigned himself to holding in his lunch as best he could.

 _Dammit, why do I have to deal with this? These guys aren't having any problems with this damn ride!_ he thought to himself. He ran a hand through his jet-black hair, slapped on his headphones, closed his eyes, and tried to immerse himself in music until his stop decided to rear its head.

After what felt like _days_ later, the bus ground to a halt with a sickening squeal of the brake mechanisms rubbing against each other and the worn-down tires rubbing against the road. The young man cringed at that, but, a little too quickly, stood up from his seat as soon as he could. He barely heard the bus driver saying that they'd reached their stop over his utter concentration upon the task of getting off the damned machine.

Yet the bus driver was still faster. The young man scowled at the aging man in charge of making him motion sick for the past four hours as the latter opened the door to the bus' cargo hold. The driver gave the young man the tattered briefcase inside with a grandfatherly smile. He took it with a grunt of affirmation, and extended the handle, allowing the baggage to rest on its swiveling wheels.

"Stay safe in the 'Falls, kid," the driver sternly, yet gently, told the young man. He only grunted again in response. Satisfied, the driver boarded his vehicle, and the bus peeled away on the poorly-paved road, flanked by a cloud of murky grey smoke.

"Gravity Falls, huh?" the young man mumbled to himself. He shook his head and started to make his way down the path into the town, his luggage bumping along behind him.

* * *

 **AN: Okay, I could probably have gotten this out a lot sooner than I had, but I had also finally managed to get my hands on a GTX 1080, a Corsair AIO Cooler, and an Asus MG279Q Monitor, so I had to set it all up, then overclock everything to make sure everything was going to be crushing the games I threw at them. Plus, I was trying to make a Ruby Rose Rainmeter desktop which is fun but a pain in the ass to actually do. Actually, I haven't managed to fully push the 1080 yet, so I'm gonna just go overclock that...**

 **WAIT A SECOND. I still have things I need to talk about! So yeah, the story is _hopefully_ coming together more, and that last bit at the end is supposed to be something like foreshadowing or something, idk sometimes. I hope you like what I'm doing though, as honestly I don't know sometimes without an editor for my stuff now. **

**But besides that, I can tell you guys what my next thing is gonna be! I'll give you a hint and a sneak peek: It has to do with Blake and Gay Space Rocks.**

 **Here's the sneak peek:**

* * *

I woke up cold.

No, not like in a cold sweat, or like I felt mentally cold, as if I'd done something horrible (though I had done that, don't you mind), but literally cold. My skin was long past erupting into gooseflesh and I could swear that my blood had turned to something resembling pebbles of ice in my veins. Numbly, I felt my body curl in on itself into a ball in pure instinctive reflex, feeling myself shiver as my muscles spasmed in a futile attempt to warm my body up. I could barely breathe, and from what I could tell, I was also floating in the air somehow.

With a grunt, I tried to force my eyes open in order to see what was going on. It took me a couple of tries, but eventually I forced my eyelids through a layer of frost that had apparently built up there from the cold.

I saw darkness. All around me, there was naught but a sea of blackness, only permeated with little pinpricks of light that I might've guessed were stars, had I assumed I was in space. However, that was impossible, as man hadn't made it outside Remnant's atmosphere anyway.

Right?

I could feel my mind start to shut down as a haze of inky dark spread out over my mental faculties. I was probably sure that I was hallucinating at that point. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen. Maybe my Aura was gone and I was just too tired to go on at that point, but taking a nice, long nap seemed like a pretty good idea.

I closed my eyes and shuddered one last time before slowly consciousness faded and a dreamless sleep took hold of my brain like a sheet of metal in a vice.

* * *

"Ah-CHOO!"

The youngest Crystal Gem, a 13-year-old boy named Steven Quartz Universe, found himself propelled up through the Warp Stream from the force of his sneeze. In the microgravity environment of the Warp, it was enough to push him along and out of the Warp Stream that he and the other Gems had been using as transportation. His head poked through the magical energies of the stream and he started panicking for but a second.

"Waah! Wha?" the half-Gem hybrid exclaimed, only to stop as he saw the beauty of the Warp beyond the stream. "Whoa."

From here the young Gem saw numerous roiling black thunderclouds caressing the extradimensional void filled with strange lights of mysterious origin. He could even see and faintly hear lightning and thunder erupting from one of the clouds in the distance.

However, for as much as it was an awesome sight, the young Crystal Gem took notice of something else: a dark, vaguely humanoid shape floating just outside the stream, covered in little icicles and frost and a white piece of cloth that somewhat resembled a jacket.

Before he could take a closer look, however, he felt himself being yanked back by a force behind him. He looked behind him to find the resident worrywart of the team: Pearl. The much older Gem looked like she was on the verge of a panic attack, and appeared to be trying to calm herself by inspecting every inch of Steven's form for damage.

"Careful! It's dangerous to stick your head out of the stream!" she admonished, coming down from her panicked state.

"There's not much air, and it's very cold," added Garnet, the stoic de-facto leader of the Crystal Gems. She reached over as she was saying this and flicked some snot off of Steven's rather cold nostrils.

"Wait! Wait, you guys! I saw something out there!" Steven cut in, clearly excited by whatever he had found in the expanse.

"What?" Pearl asked incredulously.

"Something just... floating out there! It looked kind of like a person with a white coat!"

"Steven, that's not possible. Is your vision blurry from the pollen?"

"I can see perfectly," he squinted, "Pearl. I know I saw something out there!"

"There's nothing out there, Steven," answered Garnet, "There hasn't been anything out there for a long, long time."

"But what if there is?!" Steven was almost shouting at this point, "What if there's really someone out there; someone who needs our help out there because they're lost and alone and it's too cold, and-!" The young Gem was cut off by Garnet, who had gently placed her hand over his mouth.

"If it helps, we can check, just to be sure. After all, what protectors of the innocent would we be if we left someone at the mercy of something as dangerous as the Warp?" Steven nodded along, stars in his eyes as he mentally rejoiced at the large Gem's approval of his suggestion.

* * *

The Crystal Gems' heads, sans Steven's, emerged from the light-coloured Warp Stream, warping the light streaming around their heads and necks. Garnet's, Amethyst's, and Pearl's gazes all swept through the void, attempting to locate the figure that Steven had described. Some of them searched more halfheartedly than others, until they eventually found it.

Pearl let out a little surprised gasp when she caught sight of it, and the other two, with heads on a swivel, locked their gazes onto an unmoving form, moving weightlessly through the empty space of the Warp. Pearl let the milky-coloured gem on her forehead shine as a makeshift lamp, illuminating the dark form before them.

It appeared to be a late-teenage human girl, with long, flowing jet-black hair and a black bow atop her head, wearing a long white coat, curled up into a fetal position, presumably in an attempt to keep warm. A large gray duffel bag hung from her shoulder. Pearl's arm emerged from the warp and came to rest over her mouth, in order to stifle a shocked gasp that she dared not utter. The three feared for the worst, but slowly relaxed when they noticed little puffs of vapor emerging from her mouth. She was still breathing. That was a good sign, right?

"Garnet," Pearl said, voice barely above a whisper. Garnet, with her perfect poker face, said nothing, instead nodding at her comrade.

Garnet's arms emerged from the Warp Stream and started to glow. Then they stretched and contorted as a result of her shapeshifting ability, and reached out to the girl. Her limbs pulled the unconscious young woman into the safety and warmth of the Warp Stream, and she seemed to relax a bit once her body had started to warm itself up.

Steven Universe went wide-eyed at the new arrival and he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Is she...?"

"No. She was breathing. She just needs to get warm, 's all," answered Garnet. Steven let out the breath that he didn't realize he'd been holding.

"Well it's a good thing you let us know that you saw something, little man," Amethyst remarked, "Who knows what could've happened to a human being out in the Warp?"

"Well, it won't do anyone any good to just stay here prattling on about it. We need to make certain that she'll be alright before anything else, for the time being. It is our job to be the guardians of humanity, after all." Pearl gave the girl, still curled up in Garnet's arms, one last glance as the Warp Stream fell away around them and once again the Gems found themselves inside Steven's Beach House once more.

* * *

 **So there's that. I hope it didn't pad out the length too long, but my next project is a RWBY/Steven Universe crossover, yay! Even though I am an insufferable automaton with no concept of humor, I hope I do alright. I still haven't figured out a title, though, so that might be a problem.**

 **So I'll see you later. Read, Review, Favorite, and stuff like that. See you soon, I hope.**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia**


	5. Chapter 5: A Challenger Approaches

**November 5, 2017**

 **Hello all, I've been having a real shitty start to another semester of high school and this is all that I have to show for it. Hope you like it.**

 **(More info in the A/N)**

 **Word Count: 5,887 words.**

* * *

 _I keep a picture of you,_

 _But I don't know just what I'd do,_

 _If I saw you face to face right now._

Ruby Rose stared up at the messy tangle of wire, fuses, PCBs, and capacitors as she pondered the mess she'd gotten herself into that day, her headphones blaring music into her ears (the human ones, anyway). The young huntress, now lying on her back and under the thrice-damned ice cream machine with a workman's toolkit at her side, gazed into the void of disorganized clutter that made up the innards of the non-functioning utility with endless frustration and a little voice in the back of her head commanding her to purge it from the earth with the fury of a thousand suns.

 _You know I've always loved you._

 _If I could stop myself I would._

 _But there's no easy way to-_

Well, truth be told, Ruby knew it wasn't _quite_ as bad as she thought it was. _That_ was mostly because it had been a perpetual headache, as constant as the changes of the seasons, since the day Soos obtained it for the Mystery Shack. Really, Ruby had almost repaired all of the most essential components, and it was pretty much functional at this point.

 _-end... How I feel..._

 _And to change... What was real._

 _Though we try to fade to black,_

 _In the end we come right back._

However, despite the fact that the ice cream machine's dispensing and money-accepting systems worked, the actual, most important, function that the machine should have possessed, the refrigeration that was the very point of such a device's existence, remained stubbornly broken. Thankfully, Ruby had a trick up her sleeve this time that was _guaranteed_ to finally put an end to her frosty woes.

 _Now that we've come so far,_

 _How can we ever start again?_

 _Memories would lead us back, instead we just pretend._

Bobbing her head a little to the music, Ruby grabbed a short little flashlight, wrench, and a screwdriver from her toolkit and set to work removing the old, definitely broken compressor unit from the machine, then set herself to the task of installing the new one. The final repair was a relatively simple one, if Ruby said so herself. In her opinion, all of the other automated systems of the ice cream machine were much bigger pains to tackle than this one component. She was done in quicker time than it took her to clean Crescent Rose on a good day.

 _Now that we've come so far,_

 _But love that never ends,_

 _Keeps us holds us leads us always tearing us apart, again._

Ruby slid herself out from underneath the reassembled, and hopefully repaired, ice cream machine just as the song she was listening to transitioned into a bridge. The young huntress dusted herself off as she stood up and plugged in the machine after double-checking her handiwork. Flicking on the power switch on the internal power supply with a satisfying click, Ruby was rewarded with the most holy of sounds: the machine starting as it should and humming and whirring and cooling its contents. That sound was accompanied by a few rounds of applause from passersby gift shop patrons.

Letting out a whoop of triumph, Ruby packed up her tools in a matter of seconds, ready to dash off to Soos to tell him the good news. She checked the time on her scroll, the sleek and advanced Huntsman's communication device informing her that it was 12:16 in the afternoon. That meant that her goofy boss would probably be scarfing down a hoagie or something in the kitchen.

However, as Ruby prepared to dash off to the kitchen, she felt herself bump into someone, and accidentally sent them to the ground with an "Oof!". The huntress and part-time mechanic looked down and saw that she had bowled over a young guy, about her age, with hair and eyes as black as night, lightly tanned skin, and a face that looked like its owner could do no harm. Said face was now scrunched up as the stranger rubbed at the back of his head due to the fact that he'd thumped it against the wall of the gift shop in his fall.

Ruby took off her headphones and hung them around her neck, reducing the music from the only thing her human ears could hear to mere background noise. She offered a helping hand up to the young man at her feet, who gratefully accepted it.

"Hey there, are you okay?" Ruby asked, quickly looking him over for any injuries he might've sustained.

Hey, you never knew when you were the only person who had a weaponized soul on earth!

"Yeah," the guy said, "Yeah, I'm good, thanks."

"No problem!" chirped Ruby. "Is there anything you need?" She leaned in close and whispered, " _Sometimes it feels like there's nothing good in here, but don't tell my boss that._ "

The guy chuckled at that, his face gaining an easy and natural grin, "I'm not really looking for anything to buy. Tell me, would you happen to know where Stanford Pines is right now?"

 _What would he want with Ford?_ thought Ruby. "Honestly, I don't know, sorry. My best guess? He's in the woods, documenting or catching some weird thing to experiment on." she shrugged. "I dunno, that's probably your best bet on getting a hold of the guy."

The young man nodded his head in thanks and left the gift shop in short order. Ruby was left relatively alone in the Mystery Shack Gift Shop until a small shape rocketed into her side. Surprised, both Ruby and shape tumbled to the oaken floorboards of the gift shop in a tumble of limbs and clothes. However, in short order, Ruby managed to separate herself from an ecstatic Mabel Pines.

"OHMYGOSH YOU GOT THE ICE CREAM MACHINE WORKING YOU'RETHEBESTEVER THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!" Mabel practically screeched in joy.

Ruby smiled warmly down at the younger girl, whose eyes were like twin stars with how much joy they contained. She patted the top of Mabel's head and said, "Hey, don't get too excited. Soos ain't getting any ice cream before I tell him that I fixed his machine."

Mabel shrunk back, embarrassed. "Sorry about that."

"No worries, let's just give the boss the good news," replied Ruby.

The two of them left the gift shop together and made their way through the Mystery Shack. After winding through the old house's many hallways, stuffed to their smallest wooden crevices with fake knick knacks, the duo stumbled upon their intended destination: Soos Ramirez's office, previously Stanley Pines' office.

"-to know if Stanley kept it all this-!" Ruby managed to hear before she knocked on the heavy wood door, the action creating a couple of dull thuds, prompting a pair of voices to call, "Come in!" nearly simultaneously. Ruby's heightened hearing easily picked out the voices as those of her boss, as well as the other older Pines twin, Stanford.

 _What's Ford doing with Soos_? thought Ruby as she twisted the doorknob and opened the door with a crisp click and shrill creak. She and Mabel filed politely into Soos' office. It was a small affair, little enough to have probably served as a storage closet in a past life, and it was cheaply constructed enough to have served as Stanley Pines' former office. The miserly old man's equally old digs, according to what Soos and Dipper told Ruby, had been given a thorough makeover. The floorboards had been repaired with brand-new hardwood, the wallpaper had been replaced, and the whole place looked about as spotless as a new piece of glass, fresh from the factory. Where old piles of junk, sat within containers made of junk and held together by junk, once had taken up space and did little else, pristine and clean, yet well-loved pieces of relatively-new furniture and office essentials now resided. Even the ancient rotary phone on the desk was thrown out in favor of a brand-new handset. When Soos wanted to renovate, the goofy handyman was thorough.

Soos, now the proprietor of the Mystery Shack, was leaning back in his plush recliner with his feet propped up on his sturdy desk. He listened to the other occupant of the room, sans Ruby and Mabel, and stared attentively at him over his healthily-sized stomach.

Ford, clad in outdoor clothing- a cool and breathable tan sportsman's shirt under a light but long coat and dark green cargo pants- stood off to the side with his hands tucked in his coat pockets, looking back at Soos.

However, the two mens' attention was turned to Ruby and Mabel the moment the girls stepped into the office. Soos greeted the two with a cheerful look and a small smile, while Ford did much the same, only with a small, cheerful look and an even smaller smile. Ruby quickly decided that the older man had other things on his mind today.

" 'Sup, Ruby, Hambone," Soos greeted easily.

"Good afternoon, you two," Ford greeted, not quite as smoothly as the more outgoing handyman-turned-proprietor.

"Heya," Ruby said, "just wanted to let you know that the ice cream machine's fixed."

Soos' face split into a smile, though it seemed a smidge forced, uncharacteristic for a guy like him. "That's great, Ruby..." he said, his voice trailing off at the end.

"Is something wrong?" asked Mabel.

The two adults in the room traded quick glances before Ford said, "Actually, I think you two might be able to help me out on this one. Something's gotten into a few of the creatures in the woods, and I want to investigate it. They're scared, which is _incredibly_ unlike them, and maybe you, Ruby, could tag along."

Ruby nodded her head. "I've got nothing better to do today."

"Hey, wait!" Mabel interrupted. "What about me? I can handle myself!"

"Look, Mabel," Ford addressed the girl, "I don't have any doubts as to your ability. Superapocalypse notwithstanding, you've long since proven yourself capable of taking care of yourself. But these guys... They don't take too kindly to people of the... fairer sex."

Ruby snorted. "Manotaurs."

Ford and Mabel nodded in reply, the former in affirmation and the latter in realization.

"Dip-stick told me about them once," Mabel said. "I think I'm good on this one, but why are you taking Ruby, then?"

"Well, you don't exactly say 'no' to a six-foot-tall scythe that can both cleave you in half and tag you at a thousand meters, easy," Ruby pointed out.

"Exactly my point," Ford agreed. "Now, I don't have my old research materials left on me, but I _do_ believe I wrote something in my third journal, which Stan kept a copy of. I'm gonna need that back, but after that, we'll get to work."

* * *

Ruby had decided a long time ago that she didn't like manotaurs.

It was a feeling stemming from an encounter over the course of the school year. Ruby, in between hanging around Gravity Falls High School (because education waits for no circumstance, sudden change in race and dimension or no) and keeping the Mystery Shack from falling into ruin, Ruby sometimes went out into the woods to help settle "disputes". Usually these disputes would be little more than Grimm encounters, and most critters were content to repay her with thanks or the occasional favor.

The manotaurs were different. Oh sure, they made themselves out like macho men who could handle anything, but the moment a Creature of Grimm reared its ugly, snarling head, they would squeal in terror and run faster than the gazelles they occasionally hunted. And then they had the guts to revert back into the macho jerks that they were once the threat had left, and snubbed Ruby for being a girl, despite the fact that she'd saved their lives.

Case in point, the massive (in more ways than one) jerkwad standing in front of her and Ford, glaring swords down at them. The dude was an extraordinarily-built thing, laid upon a framework of what was practically steel in the shape of bones. Heck, Ruby was sure you could cut rocks with the chin hiding somewhere under his beard. The manotaur possessed goatlike shaggy furred legs ending in hooves and it had a pair of horns that pointed to the sky, like he was doing a "devil horns" hand pose with his head. As one would naturally expect from something half man and half "taur", parts of his moderately-tanned skin were carpeted in curtains of dark hair, specifically in his beard, on his chest, and under his pits, much to Ruby's disdain. He also wore nothing except for a red cap.

She wrinkled her nose at him. By manotaur standards, he was an averagely-built- maybe on the slim side, even- , cleanly-shaven, well-dressed guy.

"Why'd you bring the girl, old timer?" growled the manotaur. "You know we don't very much like people like you, much less lasses like her."

Ruby matched the manotaur's glare with one of her own. "This 'old timer' saved the whole darn _world_ last summer, and _I_ stopped a Creep hive from eating _your_ butts not too long ago."

The manotaur finally grunted in recognition. "You're scythe girl."

"As advertised."

"Well, that's great and all, Chutzpar, " said Ford, "But all the macho bull aside, _you_ called _us_ , so tell us why you want our help, or we're going back home."

The manotaur, Chutzpar, sighed through his nose. "The thing's been terrorizin' us for weeks. Not a single one of us has been able to do even a _pull-up_ in peace ever since it started!"

"What's been happening?" asked Ruby.

"Everywhere we go outside the Man Cave, there's been not a single man-ute when we do not feel it. This... oily presence that we can _feel_ on our backs, just starin' at us all the time! Not a single muscle flexes out there with ease! Not a single chest hair can flap in the wind with that _thing_ lookin' at us! But then, every time we check and see, there's nothin' there! Me and the men hoped you could do somethin' about it."

Ford actually let himself give a gleeful little smile that slowly grew with every word of the story Chutzpar was telling them. "Oh, you'd better _believe_ we can do something about that one," he said. "Thanks for telling us all this. Rest easy now. We'll have your little problem taken care of by the end of the day."

Chutzpar gave a little nod of gratitude before he galloped away into the trees with a guttural roar of manliness, parting the trees and shrubbery in his path like a particularly sharp knife through a particularly tender steak with reckless abandon.

Ruby waited until his roars faded away until she turned to Ford. She removed her baseball cap and rubbed at her sore wolf ears as she said, "So _do_ we actually have a plan to do this, or were you just lying?"

Ford never let his grin fall an inch as he replied, "I do. This thing's a Hide Behind. Mean monster that preys on wandering hikers in the woods. Until recently, I didn't even know if it had any weaknesses, but quite a few sources mentioned that it _really_ doesn't like alcohol. A couple of bottles of whiskey, applied directly, should stun it enough for us to finish the job."

"Okay then," Ruby said, "So all we gotta do is give it a hangover and it'll be no one's problem anymore?"

Ford nodded. "Come on, we'll head back into town and pick up some of the strongest stuff we can find."

"There's no party like a Pines family party, huh?"

* * *

Soos Ramirez's old truck was such a ramshackle thing that it was unthinkable that it was a fully-operational vehicle at one point. Its frame's dents had dents and one of its doors was replaced with an off-color replacement from a time when it had been torn off of its hinges. Its paint job was less paint than rust, and was an unappealing shade of brown all around. The license plate at the front, displaying, "FIXINIT1," was broken and hanging from just one bolt. Its leather seats were worn and its interior was scratched up and damaged. It was a rustbucket in every sense of the word.

However, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The truck ran nine days in ten and like it merely had a half-portion of Wheaties that morning the tenth.

Ruby and Ford approached the vehicle, walking a brisk march to Soos' personal transport. Ford pulled a set of keys from his coat with a small jingle of metal, unlocked the truck, and opened the back seat door. From there, the older man yanked a heavy duffel bag with a grunt and a clink of glass inside. Unzipping it, Ford reached into the bag's depths and pulled out a crate of glass bottles filled with a clear liquid.

At first glance, they weren't anything special. They kind of looked like your run-of-the-mill wine bottles, with everything that one would expect to find on a liquor bottle, like the manufacturer label.

"These are rectified spirits," Ford explained, "They're _highly_ concentrated, and these monsters have a 95% alcohol-by-volume ethanol content. You'd have to be half-crazy to try to drink a lot of this in one sitting, but for our purposes, it might even kill the Hide Behind outright."

"And if it doesn't?"

Ford grinned and pointed at Crescent Rose, which was currently hanging on Ruby's back in its folded-up compact form. "That'll probably do the job," he said. He also lifted his coat, revealing a boxy weapon about the same size as the hand cannon jammed into his waistband, and said, "This baby fires a highly concentrated laser that can disintegrate a sheet of steel at fifty yards in three seconds. Never leave home without it. Between my gun and yours, I don't think it'll stand a chance."

Ruby nodded her head. She knew the older man was a genius with more than one interest, but the fact that he was _also_ a weapons nut was making her feel all giddy inside.

"Alright, let's get-" Ruby tried to say before she was interrupted by a shout.

"Hey! Hey, Mister Pines! Mister Pines!"

The voice belonged to that same young man that Ruby had encountered in the Mystery Shack Gift Shop earlier, running up the trail that Ruby and Ford had taken up into the forest. His face was lined with beads of sweat and he panted like a dog in between footfalls.

Ford slipped the crate of rectified spirits back into the duffel bag and arched a brow at him while the young man closed the distance between himself and the old scientist.

"Why hello there," cautiously greeted Ford. "I don't believe I've ever seen you before in my entire life. Who are you, and why are you here?"

Once the young man recovered, he replied, "Finally, I've found you... The famous Stanford Pines, the doctor with twelve Ph.D.s turned conman, and mysterious backwoods dweller." While he was saying all this, Ford's expression shifted into one of suspicion and barely-disguised hostility, until the young man's mouth upturned into a grin and he extended his hand. "The name's Michael Talman. It's an honor to meet you!"

Ford looked down at the offered hand and hesitantly shook it with his signature six-fingered grip. "Likewise."

"Oh my gosh, Dr. Pines," Michael continued, withdrawing a pen and notepad from one of his pants pockets, "I have, like, _so_ many questions for you! I mean, I came to this town to _specifically_ try and meet you, and here you are! I used to look up your old research stuff, and then when you resurfaced last year, I just _had_ to come and meet you! You're my idol and-"

Ford held up a hand to stop Michael from blabbering on any more. "Look, I'd _love_ to talk about this, but Ruby, here, and I are in the middle of some business we need to take care of," he said, sarcasm dripping from his words. "So if you'd please, stay out of the woods for the next-" Ford checked his wristwatch, "-sixteen hours or so and don't try to come in after us. Okay? Bye!"

Ford then marched off into the foliage of the forest, whistling a jaunty tune as he went. Michael gave a puppy-dog-eyed stare at Ruby, begging her to let him stay, but the huntress just gave a shrug, grabbed the duffel bag from Soos' truck, locked the vehicle, and followed the old scientist into the woods, leaving a sputtering and indignant Michael Talman behind.

* * *

The woods of Gravity Falls were quiet today. Normally, there would be just enough background noises and sounds from the various vegetation, animals, and weird crap that no one would really notice much amiss, and people could take their walks through the woods in peace. However, today, the woods stood still, as if the very trees, in their ancient wisdom, knew what was soon to happen, and was holding their collective breath in anticipation.

In any case, the silence was quite agreeable for Ruby Rose, human-turned-faunus huntress prodigy extraordinare. With her enhanced senses, it was advantageous that there would be little interference when she concentrated every fibre of her being towards finding the Hide Behind, whatever and wherever it was.

Ford had given her the rundown on the Hide Behind. It was a spiteful, hungry thing that liked to prey on people that wandered the woods, using its ability to shapeshift to a limited degree in order to hide behind parts of the forest- hence its name- and sneak up on its victims in order to devour them in its lair later. It wasn't anything like the gnomes, or the manotaurs, or many of the other creatures that roamed the woods. This thing killed people. This thing was a monster.

This thing wouldn't get any mercy from Ruby.

Soon, the pair stumbled onto a clearing between the trees. Now, just because there was suddenly a lack of things to hide behind didn't mean the Hide Behind was far behind. If Chutzpar was telling the truth, the monster wouldn't really care if either of the two people hunting it was in the thick of the brush or on top of a hill, so long as they looked like they were lost.

So Ford and Ruby did just that. A crate of liquor each at their sides, they meandered about, walking in circles and loudly complaining about maps that they "didn't have" and trails that they were "supposed to follow". After a little while of absolutely nothing interesting happening, Ruby was about to call out to Ford to give the search a rest for the night before it got too dark to see.

That is, until Michael Talman stumbled into the clearing, a look of confusion plastered across his face.

Having already been on edge, Ford and Ruby reacted much like soldiers on patrol would, and started to draw their weapons on the poor guy. However, where Ford's laser pistol emerged from his coat and became trained on the guy, Ruby just _barely_ kept herself from drawing Crescent Rose and slamming a high-caliber, high-velocity sniper rifle round into the newcomer.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" Michael exclaimed, startled. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

"What in the world are you doing here, kid?" barked Ford. "I told you not to follow us!"

"Well that got boring real quick. Besides, if you were doing some weird stuff, then I figured the safest place to be would be next to the guy with twelve Ph.D.s!"

"Not a good enough excuse," Ford growled.

Suddenly, Ruby felt a weird sensation make itself known behind her. She recognized the feeling as something she could feel if someone- or some _thing_ \- was watching her. She sucked in a breath, realizing _exactly_ what it was that had decided to prey upon the three of them.

"Honest, man!" Michael said. "I mean-!"

"Everyone, _shut up_!" exclaimed Ruby. To her surprise and fortune, the two men with her wisely did as she asked, though they looked just about ready to start getting at each others' throats again. "Does anyone else-"

Suddenly, Ruby felt a crushing pressure against her skull for an exceedingly brief moment before it was replaced by a feeling of weightlessness. That, in turn, was then replaced with a pain that shot through her entire body as the young huntress felt herself colliding with something hard and rough. For a second, her vision was filled with darkness until it gave way to a fuzzy blurriness and she could taste a hint of copper in the back of her throat.

She could hear Ford calling her name, his voice filled with worry, but his words seemed a million miles away. Why would she care about being hurt? She was still there, still conscious, though she was a little bit tired. Maybe a nap might be a good idea...

"RUBY!"

Ford's scream abruptly dragged Ruby's mind back into reality. With considerable effort, Ruby activated her Aura and set it to work on clearing her head. Soon enough, her vision cleared and all of her senses came crashing back down to her, as did the pain. Ruby bit back a hiss at the agony of her body feeling like it had been struck with ten jackhammers and instead focused on the situation at hand.

Ford now stood his ground in the clearing, a bottle of liquor in one hand and his laser pistol in the other, standing protectively over Michael, who was now quite visibly trembling in fear. It wasn't hard to see why.

The Hide Behind was an imposing thing. It towered over the two men with nothing short of malevolence in its glowing yellow eyes, and its body, shriveled up and gangly, yet gaunt and disproportionately tall, almost exuded an aura of hatred. Long limbs ended in longer hands and fingers tipped with wicked-looking claws curled and uncurled menacingly over its prey for the few seconds that Ruby could observe before it made to rake them over Ford's relative unprotected body.

However, the old scientist was far from complacent or unsure, and easily saw the attack coming. When the Hide Behind was in a position where it could no longer retreat, Ford hurled one of his bottles at the monster. The bottle shattered into a shower of glass shards and the liquor inside splattered onto the monster. Upon hitting its skin, it reacted almost like an acid, visibly burning away at flesh and producing vapors as if it was eating through the Hide Behind.

But the monster didn't seem all that wounded. In fact, it seemed downright _furious_ at what had just transpired. When Ford raised his pistol to finish the job, the Hide Behind merely contemptuously batted Ford's shooting hand away, throwing the gun a good twenty feet into the brush. For the first time since Ruby met the old man, she saw genuine fear flash in Ford's eyes for a brief instant before he schooled his features into a mask of defiance.

"You want a piece of me, you cowardly bastard?!" Ford challenged, "Come and get it!"

Ruby finally managed to pick herself off of the ground and shouted, "Hey! Over here!"

Incredibly predictably, the Hide Behind whipped its ugly head around to the source of the new voice. When it had sight of Ruby, it let out a snarl and started to make for her location.

Well, now Ruby couldn't just let it come that close to her, could she? It probably stank, and she just got her clothes washed that day; couldn't let that happen, now.

Ruby sank her hand into her crate, feeling around for a fresh bottle to use as munitions. When her hand came away wet, she nearly panicked, quickly inspecting the damage. Evidently, her impromptu face-meets-tree session had shattered more than a few of the bottles, leaving her with no more spirits to throw at the quickly-approaching monster.

She cursed. There was, however, still hope. The crate would undoubtedly be soaked in liquor from the broken bottles and inside, there would be innumerable glass shards. The young huntress prayed to every god she knew that the alcohol inside had not already evaporated and reared back, glaring directly at the Hide Behind's glowing yellow orbs.

They reminded her of staring at the headlights of an approaching car. Now _that_ was a depressing thought, but there was precious little time to act. If Ruby wanted to make it out of this encounter alive, she would have to act quickly.

Fortunately for her, quickly was how she did nearly everything.

Ruby hurled her crate at the Hide Behind, hearing the glass inside bounce and tinkle around inside of the box like windchimes. Scarecely more than a second later, she drew Crescent Rose from behind her. It partially unfolded, with a series of mechanical clicks and clanks more befitting an industrial machine rather than the precision weapon it was, into a crimson shortened sniper rifle, complete with a compact, huntress-grade 12x optical zoom sight. Taking hardly an instant to eject its magazine and insert a fresh one of Gravity Dust rounds, Ruby quickly shouldered her beloved weapon and sighted upon the crate she had tossed at her towering opponent. Slowly letting out a breath, she gently squeezed Crescent Rose's trigger and loosed a .50 caliber round with a bark of her rifle's distinct muzzle report.

The shot hit the crate dead center, and the box exploded into wooden and glassy shrapnel, showering the Hide Behind with debris. The wood of the crate, combined with the glass opening wounds across its body, culminating in shrill shrieks of agony emanating from the monster as it frantically tried to get the offending liquor and pieces of crate off of it.

Calmly yet swiftly, Ruby swapped the Gravity Dust magazine for a Burn Dust one and cycled Crescent Rose's bolt action, smoothly ejecting a dull gray shell and loading a new cartridge into the chamber. Another bullet saw to the Hide Behind's painful demise as it was lit ablaze through the power of Ruby's carefully-rationed Dust, aided by the alcohol its flesh was soaked in.

* * *

Michael Isaac Talman let out a long sigh of relief when the monster was dead.

He wasn't exactly known as the most steadfast and courageous guys out there, but in his opinion, that mattered little in this situation. Frankly, the _thing_ that he had just encountered was pants-crappingly scary.

Dr. Stanford Pines had, without a word, gone off to retrieve what looked like some sort of space gun from a little ways away, and the girl from the Mystery Shack had yet to come; presumably she was making sure that the beast was going to stay down.

Michael closed his eyes and took a few dozen slow breaths to calm down, and when he opened his them again, he found himself staring at his two saviors, each of them frowning down at him and looking rather impatient.

Michael gave a weak chucle. "So... This is awkward," he said after a minute.

* * *

The ride back to the Mystery Shack was a quiet one. All the while, Michael could _feel_ the tension rising in the beaten-down truck between himself, his idol, and the girl with the baseball cap. The latter two had been exchanging some sort of conversation with each other in hushed tones through the journey. Michael couldn't make out a lot of it, but he did manage to catch the words "untrustworthy", "unknown", and "troublemaker" among the near-silent whispers.

Oh God, what had he gotten himself into? Sure, Stanford Pines was his idol, but Michael, the disillusioned and student loan prone college student, was not a fool. Doubtlessly, the other occupants of the truck were probably thinking up ideas to get rid of the young and inexperienced student.

Michael tried his best to not let his anxiety show. Externally, he was sweating bullets and fidgeting as if he had ants crawling in his shirt. Internally, his mind raced with all sorts of insane and highly improbable possibilities as to his disposal.

Would they try to pay him off in order to get him to shut up? Unlikely, as that only really worked until someone decided to pay the offender more money to blab rather than stay quiet.

Maybe they had an amnesia gun? Delete some of his memories, no harm no foul, and everyone walks away happy? Then again, Michael actually would much rather keep his memories intact, thank you very much. Besides, the mind-wipe could very well give him permanent brain damage, and that was a no-no for him, being a broke college student living off of instant noodles and all.

They _could_ just shoot him and bury his body in a ditch, if worse comes to worst. In a small town like Gravity Falls, who knows just how much one could get away with? Yeah, Michael didn't exactly like to think about that one.

And so those thoughts continued to run wild through the young man's head until the truck finally came to a stop, pulled over on the side of the road. For a brief moment, he entertained the notion of a roadside murder before the lack of pushing, shoving, bludgeoning, and/or shooting him convinced him otherwise. Instead, Stanford turned around and looked Michael straight in the eyes with a curious expression.

"So," he said, "what's your deal, kid? Why follow around a grumpy old man and his sidekick into the middle of the woods?"

Michael swallowed down his fear and said, "I-I actually wanted to talk to you specifically, sir. After hearing from some conspiracy sites that the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon had become a hotbed of world-ending events and that you'd resurfaced shortly thereafter, I wanted to ask you... I wanted to ask ifIcouldbecomeyourlabassistantitwouldbemygreatestdreameverpleaseverymuchthankyou!" Michael's words tumbled like dihydrogen oxide off of a waterfall, and he continued before he could stop himself. "It'sjustthatyoudiscoveredsomuchcoolstuffaccordingtocertainsourcesanditwouldbeamazingifIcouldhelpreleasethosediscoveriestotheworldsoyeah..." he finished, his words trailing off at the end as his train of thought lost some of its steam.

Stanford never even blinked at the machine gun fire of words spewing out of the young man's mouth. Instead, he just gave Ruby a look and addressed Michael. "You know, I _have_ been looking for some more... scientific help. No offense, Ruby."

"None taken," she replied. "It's always been mechanical for me. Messing with chemicals and boring math that doesn't even blow up? Lame."

"So... is that a yes?" asked Michael. Stanford nodded, and Michael let out a sigh of relief and a whoop of triumph.

"There is _one_ stipulation, however," the scientist continued. "Any and all supernatural, paranormal, or frankly unbelievable things you see will be a part of a nondisclosure agreement. No one outside of a small circle will ever know about what we do."

Wait, didn't Michael give the whole "share information with the world" speech? He was sure he did.

He was thrilled and all to be helping _the_ Dr. Stanford Pines, but how were they going to get recognition for science-ing the crap out of the unknown now?

Man, it was going to be a _long_ summer.

* * *

 **A/N: It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been away, and the pile-up of Junior year work's been getting to me as of late.**

 **TL:DR**

 **What are you doing?**

 **I'm supposed to be having fun, playing video games, and writing fanfiction, but this one semester keeps kicking my ass.**

 **Is it SecondSemester2017?**

 **Yeah, SecondSemester2017.**

 **[Insert rest of meme here]**

 **Long story short, I didn't get to do all of that stuff that I said I would do and this is all I have to show for it. I honestly really hope you guys and gals like it. I've also been having a real _field day_ with computer troubles, which is odd, since I'm the only one in my family who can even really operate a PC with anything resembling competence. Then again, everyone else's devices, except for my sister's, have been doing some real crazy shit that I really can't explain.**

 **Song is _Now That We've Come so Far_ by Jeff Williams, part of the Red vs. Blue Season 10 OST. **

**I hope I'm still funny, but that might be a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow, and I'll see you guys next time.**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia.**

 **PS: This was supposed to be the February 1 Monty Oum remembrance challenge, but that got delayed, so I guess this is a belated that? Whatever. Rest in Peace, Monty. I hope you're proud of what everyone's been doing in your absence. Hope you can find a stable internet connection wherever you are in order to catch up on your show.**

 **Until we meet you in the next life, we'll keep moving forward, just like you said.**

 **PPS: Forgot to mention, thanks to CrazyQuilava for beta reading. Also, did anyone else catch the Volume 4 finale? It was great.**


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